THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


C^anning  Ctnknax^  (Pofunte* 


Hcliotype,  from  Plaster  Cast  of  Marble  Bust  by  Sidney  II.  Mohse. 


THE 


CHANNING   CENTENARY 


IN 


AMERICA,  GREAT  BRITAIN,  AND 
IRELAND. 


91  Ecport  of  fHtttins&  IjcIU  in  Ijonar  of  tljr  ©nr  ibttntircUtI) 
Slnniijfrearp  of  tl)c  ^irtlj  of 

WILLIAM    ELLERY  CHANNING. 


EDITED    BV 


RUSSELL    NEVINS    BELLOWS. 


BOSTON 


Geo.  H.  Ellis,  141  Franklin  Street 

(CHANNING    building). 


GHO.    H.  KLLIS,  TRINTER,   14!   FRANKLIN  ST.,  P.OSTON. 


3X 


No  power  can  die  that  ever  wrought  for  Truth; 

Thereby  a  law  of  Nature  it  became, 
And  lives  unwithered  in  its  sinewy  youth, 

When  he  who  called  it  forth  is  but  a  name. 

Therefore  I  cannot  think  thee  wholly  gone : 

The  better  part  of  thee  is  with  us  still ; 
Thy  soul  its  hampering  clay  aside  hath  thrown, 

And  only  freer  wrestles  with  the  111. 

Thou  livest  in  the  life  of  all  good  things; 

What  words  thou  spak'st  for  Freedom  shall  not  die; 
Thou  sleepest  not,  for  now  thy  Love  hath  wings 

To  soar  where  hence  thy  hope  could  hardly  fly. 

J.  R.  Lowell,  1S42. 


ANTKRO-sdcr 


CONTENTS, 


Preface, 


Introductory,    ii 

Origin  of  the  Channing  Centenary  Movement.— Account  of  the  Celebration  of  the  Ninety- 
ninth  Anniversary  of  Dr.  Channing's  Birth. —  Poem  by  Rev.  John  W.  Chadwick.—  Letters 
from  President  Charles  W.  Eliot,  Thomas  W.  Higginson,  James  T.  Fields,  Henry  W. 
Longfellow,  Henry  W.  Bellows,  Octavius  B.  Frothingham,  William  H.  Fumess. —  Resolu- 
tions of  the  Unitarian  Society  of  Newport. 


AMERICAN    CENTENARY    CELEBRATIONS. 
The  Celebration  at  Newport, 19-82 

Fifty  Thousand  Dollars  subscribed  for  a  Channing  Memorial  Church. — The  Opening 
Services.— Memorial  Discourse  by  Rev.  Henry  W.  Bellows,  D.D.— Ceremonies  at  the 
Laying  of  the  Corner-stone  of  the  Memorial  Church.— Letter  from  Dr.  Channing's  only 
Surviving  Brother. —  Ode  by  Rev.  Charles  T.  Brooks. —  Corner-stone  Address  by  Rev. 
William  Henry  Channing. —  Evening  Meeting. — Letters  from  Rev.  Dr.  James  Martineau, 
Bishop  Huntington,  Bishop  Clark,  John  G.  Whittier,  Rev.  Dr.  Hitchcock,  William  Lloyd 
Garrison. — Addresses  by  Governor  Van  Zandt,  Rev.  Dr.  Hosmer,  Rev.  Dr.  Hale. —  Poems 
by  Mrs.  Martha  P.  Lowe  and  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe. —  Remarks  by  A.  Bronson  Alcott, 
Miss  Elizabeth  Peabody,  Revs.  N.  S.  Folsom  and  Charles  F.  Barnard. 

The  Celebration  at  Boston, 83-144 

The  Meeting  in  Arlington  Street  Church. —  Addresses  by  Rev.  Dr.  James  Free- 
man Clarke  and  Rev.  Dr.  C.  A.  Bartol. 

Pulpit  Tributes. —  "  Dr.  Channing  a  Man  of  Affairs,"  by  Rev.  Dr.  Edward  Everett 
Hale. — "Channing  Unitarianism,"  by  Rev.  Minot  J.  Savage. — "Dr.  Channing  the  Ideal 
American,"  by  Rev.  William  H.  Channing. 

The  Children's  Service — Remarks  by  William  H.  Baldwin,  Governor  John  D.  Long, 
Revs.  E.  E.  Hale,  H.  Bernard  Carpenter,  Minot  J.  Savage,  William  P.  Tilden,  James  Free- 
man Clarke,  and  William  H.  Channing. 

American  Unitarian  Association. —  Addresses  at  the  Annual  Meeting  by  Rev.  Dr. 
William  H.  Fumess,  Rev.  Dr.  Frederic  H.  Hedge,  and  Rev.  William  H.  Channing. 


6  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

PAGES 

The  Celebration  at  Brooklyn, I45--53 

Mkktings  in  thk  Church  of  the  Saviour.— Remarks  of  Rev.  Dr.  A.  P.  Putnam, 
Kcv.  Dr.  K.  A.  Farley,  Rev.  Dr.  J.  B.  Thomas,  Rev.  Dr.  J.  M.  Buckley.— Ode  by  Rev. 
John  W.  Chadwick.— Remarks  of  Mr.  Oliver  Johnson.  —  Hymn  by  Rev.  Dr.  William 
Newell.—  Remarks  of  Rev.  Dr.  Charles  H.  Hall,  Rev.  Amory  D.  Mayo,  Rev.  H.  R.  Nye, 
Rev.  Dr.  Oustav  Gottheil,  Rev.  H.  W.  Foote. 

Merting  in  the  Academy  ok  Music. —  Remarks  of  Rev.  Dr.  Rufus  Ellis,  Rev.  Robert 
Collyer,  Rev.  Dr.  J.  M.  Pullman,  Mr.  George  William  Curtis,  Rev.  Dr.  C.  N.  Sims,  and 
Rev.  Henry  Ward  Beecher. 

The  Celebration  at  New  York, 254-261 

Sermons  in  the  Churches. —  No  Special  Observance  of  the  Centennial  Day. —  Oration 
by  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel  Osgood  before  the  Historical  Society. —  Discourse  by  Rev.  Dr.  Gustav 
Gottheil  in  the  Jewish  Temple  Emanu-el. 

The  Celebration  at  Chicago, 262-287 

Meeting  in  Central  Music  Hall. —  Addresses  by  Judge  Henry  Strong,  Prof.  David  Swing, 
Rev.  Dr.  George  C.  Lorimer,  Rev.  William  R.  Alger,  Rev.  Dr.  H.  W.  Thomas,  and  Rev. 
Brooke  Herford. 

The  Celebration  at  St.  Louis, 288-299 

Remarks  by  Rev.  John  Snyder,  Rev.  John  C.  Learned,  Rev.  Dr.  William  G.  Eliot,  Judge 
McCrary,  Rev.  Joseph  H.  Toy,  Mr.  George  Partridge,  Rev.  Samuel  Young,  and  Rev.  Dr. 
Boyd. 

The  CELEBR-vnoN  at  St.  Paul, 300-318 

Memorial  Service  in  Unity  Church. —  Sermon  by  Rev.  William  Channiug  Gannett. 

The  Celebration  .\t  Meadville, 319-324 

Remarks  by  Mr.  Harris,  Prof.  Frederic  Huidekoper,  Mr.  Savage,  Dr.  Wilson,  Rev. 
George  Whitman,  and  President  A.  A.  Livermore. 

The  Celebration  at  Washington, 325-327 

Remarks  by  Justice  Miller,  Hon.  George  B.  Loring,  Hon.  Horace  Davis,  Rev.  Qay 
MacCauley,  and  Mr.  Robert  Purvis. —  Discourse  and  Hymn  by  Rev.  Clay  MacCauley. 

The  Celebration  at  Ann  Arbor 32S-332 

Remarks  by  Rev.  J.  T.  Sunderland,  Judge  Harriman,  Prof.  T.  P.  Wilson,  Mr.  Anthony 
Reynolds,  Prof.  B.  C.  Burt,  Prof.  Donald  McLean,  Judge  Cooley,  and  Prof.  V.  C   Vaughan. 

The  Celebration  at  Madison, 333-341 

Meeting  in  the  Jewish  Synagogue.  —  Addresses  by  Rev.  H.  M.  Simmons  and  Prof.  W.  F. 
Allen.— Remarks  by  Prof.  D.  B.  Frankenberger,  Hon.  H.  H.  Giles,  and  Rev.  W.  E. 
Wright. 


CONTENTS.  7 

PAGES 

The  Celebration  at  Cincinnati 342-345 

Discourse  by  Rev.  William  R.  Alger. —  Remarks  by  Rev.  C.  W.  Wendte,  and  Rev.  J.  H. 
Hartley. 

The  Celebration  at  San  Francisco, .    346-352 

Discourse  by  Rev.  Dr.  Horatio  Stebbins  in  the  Unitarian  Church. 

Other  Celebrations, 353-366 

Brief  Mention  of  Meetings  in  Greenfield,  Springfield,  Watertown,  Melrose,  Ashby,  Mass. ; 
Hartford,  Conn.;  Burlington,  Vt.  ;  Concord,  Manchester,  Nashua,  East  Wilton,  N.H. ; 
Belfast,  Me. ;  Detroit,  Mich.  ;  Mi'waukee,  Janesville,  Wis. ;  Keokuk,  Iowa ;  Shelbyville, 
111. ;  Canton,  N.  Y. ;  Portland,  Oregon  ;  Montreal,  Canada. 

Notices  of  the  American  Press, 367-374 


CELEBRATIONS    IN    GREAT    BRITAIN    AND    IRELAND. 


The  Celebration  at  London 377-433 

Meeting  in  St.  James'  Hall. —  Letters  from  Rev.  .Stopford  Brooke,  George  MacDonald, 
Emen  Renan,  Rev.  Dr.  E.  A.  Abbott,  Rev.  Dr.  Stoughton,  Rev.  Dr.  Raleigh,  Miss 
Frances  Power  Cobbe,  Rev.  Dr.  G.  Vance  Smith,  Rev.  W.  H.  Fremantle,  Sir  J.  C.  Law- 
rence and  others.  —  Addresses  by  Rev.  Dr.  James  Martineau,  Rev.  J.  Baldwin  Brown,  Mr. 
Thomas  Hughes,  the  Dean  of  Westminster,  Dr.  William  B.  Carpenter,  Rev.  Dr.  R.  Laird 
Collier. 

The  Celebration  at  Liverpool, 434-455 

Meeting  in  St.  George's  Hall.— Addresses  by  Mr.  H.  A.  Bright,  Rev.  J.  H.  Thorn,  Rev. 
Charles  Beard,  Rev.  William  Binns. 

The  Celebration  at  Manchester, 456-478 

Meeting  in  the  New  Town  Hall. —  Memorial  Discourse  by  Rev.  Charles  Wicksteed. — 
Remarks  by  Alderman  C.  S.  Grundy,  Rev.  William  Gaskell,  Rev.  Charles  T.  Poynting, 
Prof.  Roscoe,  Mr.  John  Dendy,  Mr.  E.  C.  Harding. 

The  Celebration  at  Belfast, 479-489 

Meeting  in  the  Music  Hall.  —  Reading  of  Letters  by  Rev.  A.  Gordon. —  Resolutions  and 
Remarks  by  Rev.  J.  C.  Street,  Mr.  John  Campbell,  Rev.  A.  Gordon,  Mr.  John  Rogers, 
Gen.  Richmond,  Rev.  C.  J.  M'Alester. 


8  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

I'AGES 

The  Celebration  at  Aberdeen 490-495 

Meeting  in  the  Unitarian  Church. —  Remarks  by  Mr.  G.  T.  Walters,  Mrs.  Carohne  A. 
Soule,  Rev.  Joseph  Vickery,  Mr.  Robert  Adams,  Mr.  William  Lindsay. 

Tributes  ok  the  European  Press, 496-510 

A  French  Catholic  on  Channing, 511-514 

The  Influence  of  Channing  in  EuRorE, S15-532 

Letter  from  Unitarians  of  Hungary. —  Letter  from  Mr.  John  Fretwell. 


PREFACE. 


Soon  after  the  celebration  of  the  Channing  Centenary,  I  was 
invited  by  Mr.  Ellis,  the  publisher  of  this  volume,  to  prepare  for 
the  press  some  account  of  the  more  interesting  Channing  memo- 
rial meetings.  I  accepted  the  invitation,  and  began  immediately 
to  collect  materials  for  a  book.  Soon  afterward,  it  was  decided  to 
make  the  volume  somewhat  more  comprehensive  in  its  plan  than 
had  been  originally  intended.  The  additional  labor  made  neces- 
sary by  this  decision,  the  press  of  regular  work,  and  the  absence 
from  home  during  the  summer  season  of  many  of  those  who  had 
taken  part  in  the  celebration,  occasioned  unexpected  delays ;  and 
the  volume  now  appears  nearly  a  year  after  the  time  at  first  de- 
cided upon.  While  the  special  enthusiasm  awakened  by  the  cen- 
tenary celebration  has  long  since  subsided,  there  has  always  been 
a  quiet,  steady  interest  in  the  study  of  Dr.  Channing's  life  and 
writings,  and  this  has  probably  not  declined  within  the  past  year. 

The  width  and  depth  of  public  interest  in  the  centenary  anniver- 
sary surpassed  the  expectation  of  even  Dr,  Channing's  most  faith- 
ful disciples  and  ardent  friends.  As  the  anniversary  day  drew 
nigh,  news  came  of  careful  arrangements  for  the  appropriate  cele- 
bration of  the  occasion  in  many  of  the  chief  cities  and  towns  not 
only  of  America,  but  also  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  Holland, 
Germany,  France,  Italy,  Hungary,  and  other  European  countries. 
After  the  event,  the  notices  of  the  press  revealed  the  unusual  com- 
prehensiveness and  catholicity  in  the  plan  and  spirit  of  many  of  the 
meetings,  the  high  quality  of  many  of  the  memorial  addresses,  and 
a  striking  array  of  names  of  well-known  writers  and  speakers  who 


lO  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

had  taken  part  in  tlie  proceedings.  Seldom  before,  it  seemed,  had 
so  many  noted  and  worthy  men,  of  widely  divergent  religious 
opinions,  joined  their  voices  in  a  chorus  of  praise  at  once  so 
hearty,  so  generous,  so  discriminating. 

To  preserve  and  present  in  a  form  convenient  for  students, 
whether  of  Dr.  Channing's  life,  character,  and  teachings,  or  of  the 
present  tendencies  of  liberal  religious  thought,  this  somewhat 
remarkable  body  of  testimony,  is  the  purpose  of  this  volume.  It 
contains  reports,  more  or  less  complete,  of  the  principal  memorial 
meetings  held  in  America,  Great  Britain,  and  Ireland.  To  have 
attempted  more  than  this  would  have  involved  largely  increased 
expense  and  more  labor  of  all  sorts  than  the  editor  could  well 
give  to  the  work.  On  the  other  hand,  a  book  made  up  exclusively 
of  selections  from  the  more  interesting  addresses  would  not  have 
served  to  indicate  either  the  extent  or  the  popular  character  of  the 
interest  in  the  occasion. 

Such  a  series  of  reports  is  inevitably  somewhat  monotonous  in 
character  ;  but  the  monotony  lies  in  this  instance  in  the  common 
theme,  and  not  in  its  treatment,  which  is  singularly  rich  and  varied. 
Many  of  the  reports  plainly  bear  the  marks  of  hasty  preparation 
for  the  daily  press.  It  has  not  been  possible  in  some  cases  to  ver- 
ify names  and  dates,  and  no  attempt  has  been  made  to  correct 
faults  of  style.  If  this  volume  shall  serve  in  any  degree  to  keep 
alive  or  quicken  the  interest  in  the  study  of  Dr.  Channing's  life 
and  teachings  which  the  celebration  of  his  centenary  awakened, 
the  editor  will  feel  amply  repaid  for  his  pains. 

R.    N.    B. 
New  York,  May,  1881. 


INTRODUCTORY. 


The  movement  which  culminated  in  the  very  general 
observance  of  the  one-hundredth  birthday  of  William  Ellery 
Channing  first  manifested  itself  early  in  the  year  1879.  For 
some  time  previous  to  this  date,  the  appropriateness  of  such 
a  celebration  had  been  freely  discussed  by  members  of  the 
Unitarian  society  in  Newport,  R.I.,  where  Channing  was 
born ;  but  no  steps  were  taken  toward  carrying  out  the  idea, 
until  the  Rev.  M.  K.  Schermerhorn,  minister-in-charge  of  the 
Newport  society,  happily  conceived  and  successfully  executed 
the  plan  of  a  preliminary  celebration  in  Newport  of  Dr. 
Channing's  ninety-ninth  birthday.  The  purpose  of  this 
movement  was  to  arouse  public  attention,  and  so  secure  the 
widest  and  best  possible  celebration  of  the  centennial,  a  year 
afterward.  The  preparations  for  this  preliminary  meeting, 
which  was  decided  upon  only  a  few  weeks  before  the  time 
appointed,  were  hastily  but  energetically  made  by  Mr.  Scher- 
merhorn ;  and  his  efforts  were  crowned  with  complete  suc- 
cess. The  best  account  of  this  meeting  appeared  in  the 
Boston  Daily  Advertiser  of  April  8,  1879,  from  which  we 
make  the  following  extracts:  — 

CELEBRATION  OF  CHANNING'S  NINETY-NINTH  BIRTHDAY. 

Thanks  to  the  energy  and  enterprise  of  the  Rev.  M.  K.  Schermerhorn, 
pastor  of  the  Unitarian  Church  in  this  city,  where  the  Rev.  C.  T.  Brooks, 
the  great  scholar,  preached  for  over  a  quarter  of  a  century,  the  meeting 


12  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

to-niglit,  commemorating  the  ninety-ninth  birthday  of  William  Ellery 
Channing,  the  great  apostle  of  Unitarianism,  was  a  complete  success 
The  meeting  \vas  held  in  order  that  the  movement  for  the  centennial  cele- 
bration—  one  year  from  to-night  —  in  this,  the  birthplace  of  Channing, 
migiit  be  inaugurated  under  the  most  favorable  auspices.  A  feature  of 
the  services  was  that  all  the  hymns  and  anthems  were  the  composition  of 
Unitarian  authors:  namely,  "In  the  Cross  of  Christ  I  glory,"  by  Sir 
John  Bowring;  "  Nearer,  my  God,  to  Thee,"  by  Sarah  F.  Adams  ;  "  The 
Lord  will  come,  and  not  be  slow,"  by  John  Milton ;  "  Thy  Kingdom 
come,"  by  Harriet  Martineau ;  "  Star  of  Bethlehem,"  by  William  CuUen 
Bryant ;  "  Universal  Worship,"  by  John  Pierpont ;  "  Old  and  New,"  by 
John  G.  Whittier;  and  "God  of  Ages  and  of  Nations,"  by  Samuel  Long- 
fellow. The  church  was  crowded,  and  the  floral  decorations  were  very 
fine,  there  being  a  large  "C"  and  the  figure  "99"  in  one  large  piece. 
The  opening  prayer  was  offered  by  the  Rev.  A.  Manchester,  of  Provi- 
dence. After  singing,  selections  of  Scripture  were  read  and  prayer  of- 
fered by  the  Rev.  R.  R.  Shippen,  Secretary  of  the  American  Unitarian 
Association  of  Boston.  An  anthem  was  then  sung,  after  which  the 
pastor  of  the  church  made  introductory  remarks,  giving  the  object  of 
the  meeting  and  explaining  the  matters  connected  with  the  centennial 
anniversary  next  year.  Governor  Van  Zandt  was  then  asked  to  preside, 
the  invitation  being  read  by  the  pastor  of  the  church.  The  Governor 
made  a  few  eloquent  and  appropriate  remarks,  after  which  a  large 
number  of  letters  from  prominent  Unitarians  were  read  by  the  pastor, 
and  a  poem  appropriate  to  the  occasion  was  read  by  the  Rev.  C.  T. 
Brooks,  and  one  by  John  W.  Chadwick,  of  Brooklyn,  N.Y.  Mr.  Chad- 
wick's  poem  is  as  follows  :  — 

"ALWAYS  YOUNG  FOR  LIBERTY." 

[Channing's  Memoir,  Vol.  III.,  p.  301.] 

Channing,  when  thou  wast  living  among  men, 
Thy  pulse,  that  beat  not  always  with  the  strong, 
Full  tide  of  health,  when  thou  didst  hear  of  wrong 
O'erthrown,  of  freedom  won,  was  once  again 
As  quick  and  warm  as  in  thy  childhood,  when 
Thou  heard'st  old  ocean's  mighty  thunder-song 
Beating  familiar  cliffs  and  crags  along. 
And  thou  didst  glow  as  ardently  as  then. 
Yes,  thou  wast  always  young  for  liberty ; 


INTRODUCTORY.  1 3 

And,  when  a  hundred  years  have  passed  away, 

Aye,  and  a  thousand,  from  thy  natal  day, 

Thy  never-dying  spirit  still  shall  be 

As  young  for  freedom  as  when  here  of  old 

In  her  great  name  thou  wast  the  boldest  of  the  bold. 

John  W.  Chadwick. 
Brooklyn,  April  3,  1879. 

A  poem  written  by  the  late  Judge  Green  of  Rhode  Island  (author  of 
"  Old  Grimes  "),  read  on  the  occasion  of  the  death  of  Dr.  Channing,  in 
Providence,  October  12,  1842,  was  read  by  the  author's  son-in-law,  Gov- 
ernor Van  Zandt. 


THE  LETTERS. 
Several  of  the  letters  received  are  appended  :  — 

Harvard  University,  Cambridge,  Mass. 

April  4,  1S79, 
My  dear  Sir, —  My  engagements  will  prevent  me  from  attending  the 
meeting  in  honor  of  William  Ellery  Channing  at   Newport  on  Monday 
evening  next. 

His  countrymen  may  well  hold  the  name  of  Channing  in  remembrance. 
By  his  eloquent  speech  and  his  unanimous  persuasive  writings,  he  greatly 
helped  to  destroy  African  slavery  and  to  rid  Christianity  of  superstitions 
with  which  it  had  been  encumbered.  These  were  good  services,  which 
may  usefully  be  commemorated  until  the  evils  which  Channing  combated 
no  longer  afflict  humanity. 

Very  truly  yours,  Charles  W.  Eliot. 


Cambridge,  Mass.,  April  i,  1879. 

Rev.  M.  K.  SCHERMERHORN  : 

Dear  Sir, — •  I  thank  you  for  the  invitation  to  take  part  in  the  service 
commemorative  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Channing.  It  will  be  impossible  for  me 
to  be  present ;  but  it  seems  to  me  eminently  appropriate  that  this  anni- 
versary shall  be  celebrated  in  Newport,  which  he  so  loved,  and  which  is 
identified  with  his  memory. 

Very  truly  yours,  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson. 


14  CHANNING    CENTENARY, 

14S  Charles  Street,  Boston,  April  i,  1879. 

Kcv.    Mr.    SCIIERMERHORN,   NEWPORT,    R.I. : 

Afv  dear  Sir,—  I  wish  it  were  in  my  power  to  be  present  next  Monday 
evening,  and  add  a  word  or  two  of  my  testimony  of  admiration  for  the 
character  and  services  of  Dr.  Channing.  The  world  owes  a  debt  of 
gratitude  to  his  sacred  memory;  and,  to  those  of  us  who  knew  and  loved 
him,  his  name  will  always  call  up  the  tenderest  recollections.  I  always 
think  of  him  in  Wordsworth  phrase  as  one 

"  Attired 
With  sudden  brightness,  like  a  man  inspired  "  ; 

and  the  tones  of  his  matchless  voice  are  as  fresh  in  my  remembrance 

as  if  I  heard  them  yesterday.     His  words  are,  indeed,  "part  and  parcel 

of  mankind."     I  trust  your  meeting  on  the  7th  will  be  in  every  way  a 

successful  one. 

Cordially  yours,  James  T.  Fields. 


Cambridge,  April  2,  1879. 

Afy  dear  Sir, —  I  wish  with  all  my  heart  I  could  answer  your  request 
favorably,  and  take  some  part  in  your  celebration  of  the  birthday  of 
Channing. 

Want  of  time  and  many  pressing  engagements  render  it  impossible 
for  me  to  write  anything  which  would  contribute  to  the  interest  of  the 
occasion. 

I  can  only  assure  you  of  my  sympathy  and  of  my  deep  and  lasting 
reverence  for  his  memory. 

Yours  sincerely,  Henry  W.  Longfellow. 


New  York,  232  East  Fifteenth  Street, 

April  2,  1879. 
My  dear  Mr.  Schermerhorn, —  Every  year  adds  to  the  admiration,  rev- 
erence, and  gratitude  that  embalm  the  name  of  Channing.  He  treated 
the  greatest  of  human  interests  in  the  greatest  manner.  There  is  noth- 
ing local,  sectarian,  or  temporary  in  his  writings  or  influence.  He  is  still 
before,  and  not  behind,  the  age,  nearly  forty  years  after  his  decease.  He 
is  waiting  for  fit  audience,  and  not  few,  from  the  better  future  of  human- 


INTRODUCTORY.  15 

ity,  already  adopted  into  the  short  calendar  of  universal  saints.  His 
religious  genius  shines  wherever  the  rarest  of  human  endowments  is 
prized.  His  peculiarity  was  to  be  able  to  wrest  the  greatest  of  themes 
from  the  hands  of  the  language  of  technical  theologians,  and  clothe  it  in 
words  intelligible  to  all,  while  fully  sustaining  its  dignity  and  its  sacred- 
ness.  Only  a  soul  intimately  acquainted  with  God  could  have  spoken 
as  he  speaks.  He,  Hke  his  Master,  had  the  full  confidence  of  his  own 
spiritual  vision.  He  trusted  the  nature  his  Maker  had  given  him,  and 
revered  it  as  a  part  of  his  reverence  for  the  Creator.  He  knew  no  dis- 
tinction between  reason  and  revelation  which  could  put  the  human  mind 
into  servitude  to  the  written  Word.  But  his  reverence  for  human  nature 
humbled  while  it  exalted  him,  and  was  utterly  remote  from  that  vain 
bugbear  called  "  the  pride  of  reason."  While  he  shared  in  reason  the 
nature  of  the  universal  mind,  he  was  under  it,  and  not  over  it.  It  was 
not  his  reason  he  honored,  but  Reason  herself,  which  was  God's  and 
man's. 

The  perfection  of  his  culture  and  style  is  the  enamel  round  his 
thoughts.  Seldom  has  the  highest  religious  thought  and  feehng  found 
in  prose  so  admirable  and  imperishable  a  vehicle.  Like  Milton's  angels, 
he  "  can  only  by  annihilating  die."  His  usefulness  is  alike  conservative 
and  progressive.  He  furnishes  both  sail  and  ballast  to  our  rational 
Christian  cause.     May  God  multiply  his  followers  ! 

Fraternally  yours, 

H.  W.  Bellows. 


New  York,  April  5. 
My  dear  Sir, —  On  my  return  last  evening  from  an  absence  of  several 
days,  I  found  your  note  on  my  table.  It  will  not  be  possible  for  me  at 
this  juncture  of  time  to  be  in  Newport  to  add  my  tribute  toward  the 
debt  we  all  owe  to  Dr.  Channing ;  and  it  is  too  late  to  write  such  a  letter 
as  would  in  any  degree  do  justice  either  to  him  or  to  my  regard  for  him. 
The  cause  of  liberal  thinking  and  human  doing  in  America,  and  abroad, 
too,  received  from  him  an  impulse  which  is  far  from  being  yet  exhausted 
or  even  comprehended.  He  builded  better  than  he  knew.  He  was  a 
seer  into  things  invisible, —  a  prophet  of  greater  times  than  he  himself 
divined.  He  was  greater  than  himself.  He  increased  in  spiritual  pro- 
portions while  he  lived,  passing  his  theological  limitations  as  he  ad- 
vanced, until  now  we  learn  that  at  last  he  was  inclined  to  adopt  Christ 


l6  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

into  humanity.  One  would  like  to  hear  what  he  might  have  to  say  on 
the  social  questions  that  vex  us.  One  thing  seems  to  me  certain,  that 
his  woiil  would  be  one  of  hope  and  faith. 

Sincerely  yours, 

O.  B.  Frothingham. 


Philadelphia,  No.  1426  Pine  Street, 
April  2,  1879. 

My  dear  Mr.  Schertnerhorti, —  I  thank  you  for  the  opportunity  and 
privilege,  which  your  invitation  gives  me,  of  paying  my  tribute  to  the  rev- 
erend memory  of  Dr.  Channing.  The  American  Unitarian  Association 
have  done  no  better  thing  than  in  taking  especial  pains  to  disseminate 
his  writings.  Not  only  nor  chiefly  because  they  help  to  advance  the 
cause  of  simple  Unitarianism,  but  because  their  readers  imbibe  from 
them,  almost  unconsciously,  principles  and  modes  of  thinking  at  once 
profoundly  religious  and  perfectly  free.  A  mind  that  has  caught  the 
spirit  that  pervades  his  works  may  be  safely  left  to  itself.  If  we  find 
that  he  is  only  uttering  our  own  thoughts,  we  nevertheless  feel  the  in- 
spiration of  his  convictions.  He  once  said  to  me  of  Waldo  Emerson, 
"  I  do  not  know  that  he  tells  me  anything  new,  but  he  inspires  me," 
which  is  equivalent  to  the  acknowledgment  of  a  greater  gift  than  any 
mere  mode  of  thought,  the  gift  of  the  spirit.  Mr.  Carlyle  somewhere 
says  that  the  writings  of  Dugald  Stewart  are  an  excellent  introduction 
to  the  study  of  moral  and  intellectual  philosophy.  I  have  always  thought 
that  Dr.  Channing's  writings  discharge  a  like  introductory  office  to  the 
whole  broad  domain  of  religious  thought.  Much  as  he  has  done  for  our 
liberal  form  of  faith,  he  has  done  far  more  enduring  service  for  perfect 
freedom  of  inquiry.  His  favorite  theme  —  the  dignity  of  human  nature, 
the  priceless  sanctity  of  the  human  soul  —  rendered  him  incapable  of 
imposing  any  restrictions  upon  the  mind.  In  his  Dudleian  lecture,  de- 
livered long  before  the  question  was  started  by  George  Ripley  as  to  the 
value  of  miracles  as  evidences  of  a  visitation.  Dr.  Channing  freely  admits 
that  sincere  Christians  may  reject  the  miracles  of  the  New  Testament, — 
an  admission  I  well  remember,  as  the  venerable  Dr.  Osgood  of  New 
York,  a  stout  Calvinist  to  be  sure  (my  pastor  then),  wrote  on  the  margin 
of  a  copy  of  the  lecture,  which  I  loaned  him,  against  said  admission, 
"This  I  deny." 

When  the  question  arose  concerning  the  miracles  (which,  by  the  way, 


INTRODUCTORY.  1/ 

has  had  results),  Dr.  Channing  offended  near  and  valued  friends  by 
saying  that  no  heresy  disturbed  him  so  much  as  the  free  and  full  discus- 
sion of  doubts  and  difificulties  interested  him.  He  was  a  free  religionist, 
and  pre-eminently  a  Christian  believer,  also.  I  remember  his  repeating 
to  me,  with  no  hint  of  dissent,  a  remark  of  Lucretia  Mott's  (who  had 
just  paid  him  a  visit,  and  whom,  by  the  way,  we  should  canonize  by  and 
by,  were  we  Catholics).  She  had  expressed  to  him  the  hope  that  the 
time  may  come  when  "a  good  man"  would  be  higher  than  "a  good 
Christian," — a  hope  which  we  all  may  share,  if  the  Christian  name  is 
not  held  to  be  as  broad  as  humanity  itself. 

It  is  not  because  his  influence  closed  with  his  brief  presence  on  earth 
and  he  is  in  danger  of  being  forgotten,  but  for  the  very  opposite  reason, — 
because  he  is  still  living  and  active  in  the  world  of  religious  thought, — 
that  you  meet  to  commemorate  him  upon  the  spot  which  he  loved.  How 
pure  his  style  was  !  As  pure  and  fresh  as  the  midsummer  air  at  New- 
port. How  chaste  his  fancy !  He  never  pauses  to  elaborate  figures  of 
speech :  he  only  suggests  them.  He  had  no  literary  ambition.  Eminent 
critics  might  find  fault  with  him.  He  gave  them  no  heed.  And  that 
voice,  so  exquisitely  flexible,  quivering  to  every  shade  of  emotion !  Yes, 
dear  friends,  cherish  him  in  special  and  revering  remembrance. 

Very  truly  and  respectfully, 

W.    H.   FURNESS. 


Letters,  some  quite  long,  were  also  read  from  A.  Bronson  Alcott,  l!loyd 
Garrison,  Dr.  Hedge  and  Dr.  Peabody  of  Harvard  College,  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson,  Rev.  James  Freeman  Clarke,  Robert  Collyer,  Dr.  Dewey,  and 
the  Rev.  E.  E.  Hale.  Telegrams  were  read  from  George  William  Curtis 
and  from  President  White  of  Cornell  University.  The  following  paper 
was  read  and  adopted.  It  will  show  clearly  what  the  Unitarians  of 
Newport  propose  to  do  for  the  centennial  celebration:  — 

At  a  meeting  of  the  congregation  of  the  First  Unitarian  Church  of  Newport, 
R.I.,  held  on  Sunday  evening,  April  6,  1878,  of  which  William  A.  Clarke  was 
appointed  chairman  and  Thomas  Coggeshall  secretary,  after  due  deliberation, 
the  following  was  ordered  to  be  presented  at  the  close  of  the  services  of  the 
ninety-ninth  birth-anniversary  of  William  Ellery  Channing,  to  be  held  on 
Monday  evening,  April  i,  1879,  and  the  approval  of  those  present  on  that  occa- 
sion solicited  thereto:  — 

First. —  It  was  unanimously  voted  that  we,  Unitarians  of  Newport,  R.I.,  ear- 
2 


l8  CHANNIXG    CENTENARY. 

ncstly  desiring  that  the  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  William  Ellery 
Channing  mav  be  celebrated  in  this  his  native  city,  and  in  order  that,  for  this 
proposed  celebration,  timely  and  fitting  preparations  may  be  made,  do  hereby 
resolve  that  a  committee  of  twelve  be  appointed,  to  be  known  as  The  Chaiming 
Cnitenuial  Committee-  of  Xtivport,  R.I.,  whose  business  it  shall  be  to  inaugurate 
and  carrv  out  such  preparations  as  may  seem  to  them  appropriate  and  desirable. 

Second. —  It  was  unanimously  voted  that  this  committee  shall  consist  of  the 
following  persons:  namely,  the  Rev.  C.  T.  Brooks,  William  A.  Clarke,  John 
T.  Bush,  Thomas  Coggeshall,  F.  A.  Pratt,  William  B.  Sherman,  Edmund 
Tweedy,  John  G.  Weaver,  Mrs.  A.  P.  Baker,  Dr.  A.  F.  Squire,  Mrs.  C.  T.  Hop- 
kins, Mrs.  Henry  C.  Stevens. 

Third. —  It  was  unanimously  voted  that  the  Unitarians  of  Newport,  R.I.,  do 
hereby  cordially  invite  the  Unitarian  denomination  to  join  with  us  on  the 
seventh  day  of  April,  1880,  in  celebrating,  in  this  his  native  city,  the  one  hun- 
dredth birth-anniversary  of  William  Ellery  Channing,  offering  the  hospitalities 
of  our  city  and  homes  to  all  who  may  be  pleased  to  come,  and  promising  our 
hearty  co-operation  in  the  carrying  out  of  whatever  arrangement  may  be  sug- 
gested to  us  as  appropriate  and  wise. 

Fourth. —  It  was  unanimously  voted  that  this  invitation  be  presented  to  the 
Unitarian  public  through  the  hands  of  the  secretary  and  officers  of  the  Amer- 
ican Unitarian  Association,  accompanied  with  the  information  that  a  local  com- 
mittee of  twelve  has  been  appointed  in  Newport,  of  which  the  Rev.  C.  T. 
Brooks  is  chairman,  with  full  power  to  act  in  co-operation  with  any  central 
committee  which  may  be  appointed  as  a  committee  of  the  Unitarian  denomina- 
tion at  large. 


THE    CENTENARY   CELEBRATION. 


NEWPORT,  R.I. 

Soon  after  the  successful  celebration  of  Dr.  Channing's 
ninety-ninth  birthday,  the  Unitarian  society  of  Newport  for- 
mally resolved,  after  due  deliberation,  to  undertake  the  so- 
licitation of  subscriptions  for  a  Channing  Memorial  Church. 
Committees  were  appointed  to  take  the  matt3r  in  hand;  and, 
after  much  hard  work  and  a  great  deal  of  patient  waiting, 
subscriptions  amounting  to  nearly  fifty  thousand  dollars 
were  secured.  Preparations  were  accordingly  made  to  lay 
the  corner-stone  of  the  proposed  edifice  on  the  centennial 
day,  A  suitable  site,  on  Pelham  Street,  opposite  the  Old 
Mill,  was  secured ;  and  the  seventh  day  of  April  found  every- 
thing in  readiness  for  the  ceremonies  which  had  been  care- 
fully arranged. 

The  celebration  began  with  a  meeting  on  Tuesday  even- 
ing, April  6,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Channing  Conference 
of  Unitarian  and  other  Christian  Churches.  A  large  con- 
gregation filled  the  Unitarian  church,  which  was  beautifully 
dressed  with  plants  and  flowers.     After  an  anthem  by  the 


20  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

choir  and  the  readins:  of  the  Scriptures,  the  congregation 
sang  Longfellow's  hymn,  "  O  Life  that  maketh  all  things 
new!"  The  Rev.  William  H.  Channing,  of  London,  offered 
prayer.  After  a  second  anthem  by  the  choir,  the  Rev.  Dr. 
G.  W.  Hosmer,  of  Newton,  Mass.,  preached  an  eloquent 
sermon  from  the  words,  "All  my  springs  are  in  Thee." 
In  concluding,  he  said:  "It  is  good  for  us  to  be  here. 
Mighty  influences  are  hanging  over  us  like  rain-clouds.  We 
are  here  to-night  waiting  for  inspiration  and  guidance,  as  the 
children  of  Israel  waited  at  the  foot  of  Sinai  for  the  pattern 
ideals  of  duty  and  life  there  to  be  shown  them.  That  re- 
vered brother,  the  prophet  of  liberal  thought,  the  Moses  of 
our  Exodus,  whose  centennial  birthday  comes  to-morrow, 
thirty-seven  years  ago  went  up  out  of  our  sight.  He  has  not 
been  forgotten.  His  word  has  gone  out  through  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking world ;  but  we  who  knew  him  need  to  have 
our  memories  quickened,  and  younger  men  will  gladly  open 
their  minds  and  hearts  to  his  influence.  Indeed,  how  great 
that  influence  has  been  !  To-morrow,  its  story  will  be  told. 
Who  like  him  has  gone  up  into  the  mount  of  aspiration, — 
the  strong  thinker,  prayerful  and  tender-hearted  as  a  little 
child,  and  so  hungering  and  thirsting  after  righteousness  ; 
and  who  with  such  consecrated  purpose  has  hastened  down 
with  his  mountain  thoughts  to  uplift  the  world  !  Oh,  come, 
let  us  sanctify  ourselves  for  the  morrow,  that  the  spirit  of 
Channing,  which  has  been  as  air  and  light  and  warmth  to 
us,  a  greater  blessing  than  we  know  how  to  appreciate,  may 
more  deeply  inspire  us  and  bless  our  children's  children." 

Mr.  Isaac  Littlefield,  of  New  Bedford,  then  sang,  "  I  will 
lift  up  mine  eyes."  After  prayer,  the  meeting  closed  with 
the  singing  of  Whittier's  hymn,  beginning,  "  O  pure  re- 
formers, not  in  vain  your  trust  in  human  kind! " 

The  services  of  the  centennial  day  opened  in  the  opera 
house  shortly  before  eleven  o'clock;   and  all  the  exercises 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  21 

of  the  day,  except  the  formal  ceremonies  of  laying  the 
corner-stone,  were  also  held  there.  The  florists  of  the 
city  contributed  from  their  greenhouses  a  profusion  of 
flowers  and  plants,  which  were  artistically  arranged  upon 
the  stage.  The  most  conspicuous  feature  of  the  floral  dis- 
play was  the  decoration  of  the  reading-desk.  This  was 
completely  covered  with  bright  buds,  and  in  front  of  it 
was  an  inscription  in  white  flowers  upon  a  bed  of  green, 
"1780  —  Channing — 1880."  A  large-size  oil  painting  of 
Dr.  Channing  stood  at  the  left  of  the  stage.  The  exercises 
were  opened  with  singing  by  a  double  quartette.  The  hymn 
selected  was  one  written  by  Theodore  Parker,  beginning 
with  the  words  "  O  thou  great  Friend  to  all  the  sons  of 
men."  Dr.  G.  W.  Hosmer  at  the  close  of  the  hymn  read 
a  short  passage  of  Scripture.  The  Rev.  Dr.  E.  E.  Hale 
offered  prayer,  after  which  the  response,  "  Nearer,  my  God, 
to  thee,  nearer  to  thee,"  was  beautifully  sung  by  Mr.  Lit- 
tlefield.  The  Rev.  Dr.  Bellows  then  began  his  discourse. 
He  was  pleasantly  interrupted  at  the  very  beginning  by  the 
confusion  attending  the  seating  of  a  train-load  of  people  who 
arrived  from  Boston ;  and  again,  in  the  middle  of  his  dis- 
course, he  paused,  and  called  upon  the  audience  to  rise  and 
sing  a  congregational  hymn  written  for  the  occasion  by  the 
Rev.  Charles  T.  Brooks.  Dr.  Bellows  spoke  for  more  than 
two  hours  ;  and  the  audience  paid  a  great  tribute  to  his  elo- 
quence, and  showed  its  deep  interest  in  his  theme,  by  listen- 
ing with  close  and  apparently  untiring  attention  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end.  The  opera  house  was  filled  to  its 
utmost  capacity.  Probably  about  two  thousand  persons 
were  present. 


2  2  CHANNING    CENTENARY, 

MEMORIAL    DISOOUESE, 

By  HENEY  W.  BELLOWS,  D.D. 

"  He  was  a  burning  and  a  shining  light :  and  ye  were  willing  for  a  season  to 
rejoice  in  his  light."  —  John  v.  35. 

It  was  when  John  the  Baptist's  light  was  fading  in  the 
glory  of  the  newly  risen  Sun  of  Righteousness  that  Jesus 
bore  this  generous  testimony  to  his  predecessor's  lustre. 
He  characterized,  in  words  that  have  become  immortal,  the 
flame  of  that  stern  prophet  who  had  heralded  the  way  for 
his  own  appearing ;  but  at  the  same  time  intimated  that  its 
fires  had  paled,  like  a  torch  whose  oil  had  burned  low.  The 
Sun  had  risen,  the  torch  was  no  longer  useful. 

We  have  come  together  to  bless  and  praise  a  modern 
prophet,  who,  like  many  other  saints  who  have  been  the 
burning  and  shining  lights  of  their  generation,  was  the 
herald  of  a  new  and  brighter  day.  But  it  is  not  his  mem- 
ory chiefly  that  we  recall.  It  is  a  living  light  that  we  are 
to  contemplate,  brighter  than  it  ever  was  ;  it  is  not  a  torch 
that  has  gone  out,  but  a  star  that  shines  on,  guiding  our 
present  way,  that  we  meet  to  rejoice  in  the  light  of.  Of 
Channing,  we  do  not  say  he  was,  but  he  is,  a  burning  and 
a  shining  light ;  and  the  season  has  not  gone  by,  it  has  not 
even  reached  its  meridian,  when  the  Church  and  the  world 
are  willing  to  rejoice  in  his  light. 

On  this  occasion,  the  centennial  of  his  birth,  and  in  the 
place  of  his  birth,  it  falls  to  me  to  be  the  spokesman  of  the 
love  and  honor  in  which  his  life  and  teachings,  his  character 
and  his  services  to  the  Church  and  the  world,  are  held  by 
his  townsmen,  and  especially  by  those  who  have  inherited 
and  have  sought  to  extend  and  perpetuate  what  was  special 
in  his  theological  opinions.      It  is   true  his  birthplace  was 


CELEBRATION     AT    NEWPORT.  23 

not  the  principal  seat  of  his  life  and  labors  ;  and  it  is  still 
more  true  that  no  sect  or  denomination  has  any  exclusive 
right  in  his  fame.  He  belonged  to  the  order  of  Christians 
called  Unitarians,  but  he  belonged  still  more  to  the  Church 
Universal ;  and  nothing  would  have  grieved  him  more  than 
any  attempt  to  shut  him  in  to  any  enclosure  that  shuts 
out  the  pure  and  good  of  any  name,  Catholic  or  Protestant, 
Trinitarian  or  Unitarian.  His  theological  opinions,  in  my 
judgment,  upon  a  very  recent  careful  reconsideration  of 
them,  prove  much  more  systematic,  definite,  and  positive 
than  it  is  common  to  allow  ;  but  they  are  also  much  more 
comprehensive,  inclusive,  and  inconsistent  with  the  secta- 
rian spirit  or  form  than  they  are  sometimes  assumed  to  be. 
They  are  profoundly  conservative  and  profoundly  radical, 
holding  on  to  all  that  is  eternal,  going  down  to  all  that  is 
eternal,  and  going  on  to  all  that  is  eternal.  In  the  strength 
of  his  moral  intuitions  and  convictions,  and  without  antici- 
pating many  results  of  later  criticism,  or  using  the  methods 
which  a  larger  learning  has  employed,  he  simply  ignored  and 
set  aside  all  that  hampered  his  full  intellectual  and  moral 
freedom,  and  slowly  evolved  a  system  of  religious  thought, 
which  has  recommended  itself  more  and  more  to  spiritual 
minds  in  all  branches  of  the  Church  and  in  all  Christian 
countries,  —  a  system  so  profound,  simple,  and  lofty,  so 
humane  and  natural,  and  yet  so  Christ-like  and  divine,  that 
it  lacks  dogmatic  and  ecclesiastical  features  almost  as  much 
as  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  or  the  personal  teachings  of 
the  Saviour ;  enters  almost  as  little  into  scholastic  and  tech- 
nical questions,  and  avoids,  by  reducing  to  their  proper  in- 
significance, most  of  the  sectarian  disputes  of  the  Church. 

Channing  was  a  theologian,  but  not  of  the  old  pattern. 
He  studied  God,  and  reported  his  ways  and  his  will  after  a 
manner  that  had  not  been  recognized  in  former  schools  of 
theology.     This  indeed  was  his  chief  service,  that  he  broke 


24  CHANNING   CENTENARY. 

with  the  old  theological  methods,  and  refused  to  settle  the 
controversies  of  the  Church  by  an  appeal  to  Scriptures  and 
creeds,  authoritative  over  the  mind  and  heart  of  man,  and 
not  merely  authoritative  within  them,  and  by  concurrence 
with  their  testimony.  He  was  fully  convinced  that  the  pre- 
vailing system  of  dogmatic  and  ecclesiastical  Christianity  — 
essentially  the  same  in  the  Romish  and  the  Protestant  His- 
torical Church  —  was  contrary  to  the  teaching  of  the  spirit 
of  Christ,  contrary  to  the  light  of  natural  reason  and  con- 
science (which  indeed  has  been  offered  as  the  proof  of  its 
divinity  and  of  man's  total  corruption),  and  that  the  power 
of  the  gospel  could  be  restored  only  by  returning  to  Jesus' 
method  of  teaching  it,  a  method  that  respected,  honored, 
and  relied  upon  man's  essential  relations  to  God,  instituted 
in  his  rational  and  moral  constitution. 

Channing  recognized  no  theology  based  upon  a  revelation 
which  by  interpretation  separated  Christianity  from  the  gen- 
eral history  of  humanity,  and  placed  it,  and  must  ever  keep 
it,  in  antagonism  to  Philosophy  and  Life.  He  did  not  con- 
sider theology  as  the  study  of  God,  within  the  covers  of  the 
Bible,  as  if  that  were  a  book  foreign  to  human  intelligence, 
and  altogether  above  and  aside  from  it.  He  resisted  stoutly, 
from  the  irrepressible  freedom  of  his  own  soul,  all  compulsory 
allegiance  to  the  Church,  to  the  creeds,  to  the  past,  to  Jesus, 
nay,  to  God  himself,  and  strove  to  emancipate  all  other  souls 
from  this  prostration  before  mere  power  and  authority.  It 
was  not  necessary  to  bind  him  with  cords  to  the  altar,  if  the 
Being  worshipped  there  was  entitled,  as  he  thought  he  was, 
by  his  holiness,  justice,  and  goodness,  to  the  sacrifice  of  his 
heart.  Freely,  joyfully,  humbly,  and  with  his  whole  soul,  he 
bowed  before  truth,  worth,  goodness,  purity,  sacredness,  and 
in  the  testimonies  of  his  own  spiritual  nature  he  saw  them, 
to  an  infinite  extent,  in  the  Great  Source  of  his  own  moral 
experiences.     But  not  one  joint  would  he  bend  before  the 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  2$ 

threats  of  mere  power,  or  the  assumptions  of  an  authority 
not  guaranteed  by  his  rational  and  moral  nature. 

We  are  not  left  to  speculate  about  his  fundamental  ideas. 
They  are  not  only  given  with  transparent  simplicity  and 
unfaltering  courage,  and  with  a  reiteration  that  to  many  is 
wearisome  in  his  collected  writings ;  but  he  has  prefaced 
his  own  works,  almost  at  the  conclusion  of  his  life,  with  a 
deliberate  statement,  in  which  he  distinctly,  and  with  the 
most  solemn  emphasis,  calls  attention  to  the  two  ideas 
which  he  wishes  to  be  regarded  as  the  dominant  notes  and 
the  master-keys  of  his  whole  system  of  religious  and  politi- 
cal thinking  and  feeling.  One  is  unqualified  reverence  for 
human  nature  ;  the  other,  boundless  faith  in  freedom.  They 
are  easily  interchangeable,  and  become  in  his  writings  one 
and  the  same.  Human  nature  is  worthy  of  unspeakable, 
immeasurable  reverence,  because  God  informs  it,  because  it 
reveals  God,  because  reason  is  the  intellectual  life  of  God 
and  man,  and  conscience  the  moral  life  of  God,  which  he 
dignified  man  by  inviting  him  to  share.  Man  knows  God 
only  because  he  is  made  in  his  rational  and  moral  image. 
God  is  as  much  dependent  upon  our  moral  and  rational 
powers  for  worship,  communion,  and  filial  love,  as  we  are 
dependent  on  his  holiness  and  loveliness  and  paternal  char- 
acter for  an  object  which  is  truly  adorable.  And  our  intel- 
lectual and  moral  powers  owe  their  worth,  their  development, 
and  their  glory  to  freedom.  This  is  God's  own  everlasting 
glory  and  life,  —  freedom.  Were  he  not  free  in  his  holiness, 
his  goodness,  his  thoughts,  he  could  not  command  the  love 
and  reverence  of  free  beings ;  and  were  they  not  free  to 
offer  him  a  voluntary,  a  rational,  moral  homage,  their  wor- 
ship would  be  mechanical  and  worthless.  Civilization  is 
nothing  but  the  triumph  of  freedom,  and  that  is  the  victory 
of  Reason  and  Conscience.  Unreason  —  the  fruit  of  self- 
will,  ignorance,  passion,  prejudice  —  shows  itself  in  barbar. 


26  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

isms  of  a  more  or  less  atrocious  kind  ;  and  society,  even 
now,  in  its  least  deplorable  forms,  is  irrational  and  barbaric. 
It  is  not  yet  based  upon,  and  is  not  characteristically  con- 
ducted in,  reverence  for  Reason,  but  rests  still  on  force,  on 
cupidity,  on  fear.  Governments  are  not  strong  where  they 
should  be  strong,  in  their  reliance  on  what  is  true  and  right, 
but  in  their  appeal  to  party  passion,  the  love  of  power,  and 
national  animosities.  Mankind  do  not  glory  in  their  nat- 
ure as  rational  and  moral,  but  in  its  external  circumstances. 
They  build  up  artificial  distinctions  of  condition  and  caste  ; 
they  glory  in  luxury  and  ostentation  ;  they  belittle  them- 
selves with  costume  and  equipage  and  titles  and  state. 
And  if  Reason,  in  the  occasional  form  of  triumphant  logic 
or  vigorous  literature,  obtains  respect,  it  is  often  in  disre- 
gard of  the  only  element  that  makes  Reason  wholly  worthy 
of  reverence,  —  its  subordination  to  Conscience.  Can  that 
state  of  society  be  regarded  as  in  any  but  an  inchoate  con- 
dition, in  which  the  quality  that  aloHe  makes  God  godlike 
or  venerable  is  made  secondary  and  subordinate,  and  that 
by  an  immense  and  all-characterizing  step,  to  what  is  con- 
venient, pleasant,  favorable  to  immediate  interests,  or  flatter- 
ing to  mean  and  interested  desires  .-*  Where  is  the  city  or 
community  in  which  the  right  and  the  good  are  enshrined 
in  the  inmost  heart ;  governing  respect  and  affection,  de- 
ciding social  station,  making  and  executing  the  laws  ?  If 
God  be  moral  perfection,  must  he  not  expect  and  demand 
that  the  race  made  in  his  image  should  be  aiming  steadily 
to  make  justice  and  goodness  prevail  and  reflect  his  holi- 
ness .-*  But  this  justice  and  goodness  cannot  be  forced. 
They  perish,  and  discharge  themselves  of  their  essence 
when  in  bondage  or  under  force.  Hence  in  Channing's 
eyes  any  state  of  commotion,  revolution,  or  contention  was 
preferable  to  intellectual  formalism  and  compulsory  decorum. 
No  atheistic  or  infidel  opinions  were  so  much  to  be  dreaded 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  2/ 

as  a  compulsory  formalism  of  creed.  That  was  the  smother- 
ing of  the  rational  and  moral  nature.  Free,  it  might  wander, 
but  it  would  learn  by  its  wanderings,  and  at  any  rate  keep 
itself  alive  by  its  motion,  and  might  some  day  return.  But 
slavery  of  the  will  was  moral  death. 

The  exalted  view  of  human  nature,  which  Channing  had, 
was  not  only  not  opposed  to,  but  it  grew  out  of  his  sublime 
sense  of  the  greatness  and  glory  of  God.  Man  learned  God's 
being  and  his  moral  and  rational  attributes  from  the  constitu- 
tion of  his  own  soul,  not  from  external  nature.  This  was  the 
chief  glory  of  man's  own  spirit,  that  it  revealed  an  Infinite 
Spirit !  Self-reverence  was  only  the  reflection  of  the  awe 
which  God's  holiness  or  moral  grandeur  kindled  in  a  being 
who  found  himself  capable  of  recognizing  the  Divine  exist- 
ence and  character,  by  the  mysterious  power  of  reason  and 
conscience,  which  at  once  made  him  a  partaker  in  the  Divine 
nature,  and  were  the  only  instruments  of  his  faith  and  wor- 
ship. That  mind  is  one  and  tJie  same  essence  in  God,  aftgels, 
and  men,  is  a  fundamental  postulate  with  him.  That  the 
finite  mind  is  of  the  nature  and  essence  of  the  Infinite  mind, 
he  everywhere  assumes  as  the  very  first  condition  of  all  knowl- 
edge of  God  or  intercourse  with  him.  The  later  or  more 
modern  difficulties,  which  have  arisen  from  the  recognition 
of  the  limitation  of  the  finite  as  vitiating  all  assumed  knowl- 
edge of  the  Infinite,  he  not  only  does  not  recognize,  but  his 
faith,  his  character,  his  service  to  humanity,  are  due  to  the 
utter  freedom  of  his  soul  from  this  most  fatal  and  ultimate 
form  of  scepticism.  That  the  finite  was  cut  off  from  the  Infi- 
nite by  its  conditions  was  to  him  a  proposition  as  meaningless 
as  that  the  bay  was  cut  off  from  the  ocean,  or  could  have  no 
communication  with  the  ocean,  because  it  was  a  bay  and  not 
the  ocean  itself.  The  human  soul  was  open  to  God,  who 
flowed  into  it  in  man's  rational  and  moral  nature  ;  and  more 
and  more,  as  the  moral  and  rational  nature  grew,  expanded,  and 


28  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

became  capable  of  receiving  it.  There  was  no  pantheism  in 
this  sentiment  of  God's  presence  in  man,  for  that  involves 
a  notion  against  which  Channing's  whole  nature  revolted, — 
the  notion  that  man  loses  himself  by  admitting  God  into  his 
soul.  According  to  him,  man  is  freer,  the  more  nearly  he 
approaches,  the  more  truly  he  is  possessed  by,  the  Infinite 
Freedom.  It  is  only  in  freedom,  in  the  exercise  of  an  unen- 
slaved  will,  that  man  can  form  any  true  conception  of  God, 
who  is  freedom  itself.  But  it  is  the  glory  of  God  that  his 
freedom  is  the  freedom  of  his  own  zvill ;  and  zvill  exists,  and 
can  exist,  only  in  a  person.  God  is  a  Person,  and  as  a  per- 
son cannot  be  confused  or  confounded  with  other  persons. 
Man  is  a  person, —  tending,  however,  by  his  weakness  of  will, 
to  degenerate  into  a  thing.  This  indeed  is  the  radical  evil 
of  sin.  It  tends  to  fall,  nay,  it  is  itself  a  fall  from  that  sense 
of  moral  freedom  without  which  moral  obedience  cannot  be 
rendered.  The  more  man  becomes  like  his  Maker,  the  more 
truly  he  is  a  Person ;  and  God's  personality  lies  in  essence, 
in  the  fact  that  his  truth  and  goodness  are  always  matters  of 
choice,  while  his  choice  is  always  truth  and  goodness.  Noth- 
ing could  have  been  more  dreadful  to  Channing  than  the 
idea  of  a  God  who  was  only  the  name  for  inexorable  laws, 
infinite  but  blind  forces,  without  self-consciousness,  without 
freedom,  without  feeling,  and  that  men  were  free  only  by 
feigning  freedom,  or  ignoring  the  bonds  that  hold  them  fast 
in  a  fatal  necessity. 

Channing's  sense  of  God's  goodness  and  holiness  were  so 
utterly  dependent  on  his  sense  of  his  freedom  that  it  became 
impossible  for  him  to  think  God  pleased  with  any  bondage 
in  his  children,  or  any  dominion  of  fear  in  their  worship  and 
service.  As  God  was  free,  so  his  children,  to  know  and  love 
and  worship  him,  must  be  free  also, — free  to  think,  free  to 
act,  free  to  worship.  This  made  him  the  life-long  foe  of  all 
systems  of  government  in  state  or  church,  whose  essence 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  29 

was  conformity,  the  suppression  of  free  thought,  free  wor- 
ship, free  will.  He  dreaded  the  effort  to  overawe  the  indi- 
vidual soul  by  the  weight  and  pressure  of  numbers  ;  to  con- 
fine the  present  within  the  limits  of  the  past ;  to  quote  stale 
precedents  against  fresh  inspirations ;  to  discourage  new 
hopes  by  instancing  old  failures  ;  to  limit  and  stereotype  the 
creeds.  He  had  a  boundless  faith  in  God's  great  and  good 
intentions  toward  the  human  race ;  the  infinite  love  of  an 
Infinite  Person  —  owing  his  own  rational  and  moral  glory  to 
his  character  and  his  freedom  —  toward  his  human  offspring, 
who  were  to  be  made  great  and  glorious  after  his  own  pat- 
tern, by  becoming  continually  more  free  and  more  reverent 
of  others'  freedom  ;  more  just,  and  loving  more  to  be  just  ; 
more  obedient,  and  more  willing  in  their  obedience  ;  more 
his  children,  and  more  themselves  at  the  same  time.  This 
is  the  key  to  the  ideality,  the  moral  enthusiasm,  the  hopeful- 
ness of  Channing's  faith.  No  one  had  a  keener,  deeper 
sense  of  individual  or  social  imperfection,  folly,  and  sin  than 
he.  His  censures,  his  groans,  his  yearnings  over  the  inade- 
quate attainments,  the  low  standards,  the  dull  feelings  of  his 
fellow-creatures  ;  his  inexorable  determination  to  accept  no 
excuses  or  apologies  in  place  of  repentance  and  newness  of 
life ;  his  severe  demands  on  himself ;  his  tonic  remon- 
strances with  the  shortcomings  of  his  best  friends  ;  his 
jealousy  of  any  praise  of  himself  or  his  doings ;  his  arraign- 
ment of  immoral  but  commanding  characters  worshipped  by 
the  world  about  him  ;  of  the  shallow  respectability  that  mis- 
took itself  for  morality ;  of  the  traditional  acquiescence  that 
called  itself  faith ;  of  the  love  of  freedom  that  coexisted  with 
the  allowance  of  domestic  slavery  in  his  own  country ;  of 
the  business  cupidity  that  covered  itself  with  the  name  of 
enterprise  and  public  spirit ;  of  the  faith  in  free  thought 
that  allowed  the  prejudices  or  even  the  just  prepossessions 
of  numbers  to  persecute  individual  peculiarity  or  even  eccen- 


30  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

tricity  of  opinion, — all  this  habitual  censoriousness  or  exact- 
ingness  was  nothing  but  the  reverse  side  of  the  immense 
confidence  he  had  in  human  possibilities,  based  upon  the 
relations  man  bore,  in  his  very  nature,  to  a  God  vi^hose  pow- 
ers, whose  love,  whose  benignity  toward  man  were  bounded 
only  by  his  Divine  purpose  of  keeping  man's  manhood  in 
him,  and  never  allowing  him,  either  as  a  race  or  an  indi- 
vidual, to  be  content  or  satisfied  in  any  state  of  life  or  happi- 
ness short  of  the  truly  human. 

Men  sometimes  talk  of  Channing's  ignorance  of  the  neces- 
sary conditions  of  human  life  ;  of  his  secluded  separateness 
from  the  world  ;  of  his  imperfect  acquaintance  with  the  pres- 
sure of  material  necessities,  the  spring  of  animal  passions 
and  appetites  ;  the  necessary  preoccupation  of  the  masses  of 
men  and  women  with  immediate  things.  He  seems  almost 
like  an  anchorite,  a  hermit,  a  pillar-saint,  in  the  fewness  of 
his  wants,  the  wonder  he  expresses  at  the  low  pleasures  men 
find  so  attractive,  and  in  the  monotonous  concentration  of 
his  thoughts  upon  the  moral  and  the  spiritual.  But  the 
truth  is,  it  was  not  that  Channing  did  not  see  all  this  ;  but 
that,  seeing  it,  he  saw  what  is  still  more  real  and  vastly  more 
powerful  and  inviting :  he  saw  God,  and  saw  man's  likeness 
to  him,  and  his  capacity  for  realizing  it,  and  saw  that  men 
mostly  did  7iot  see  it,  and  that  it  was  his  office  and  privilege 
to  draw  their  attention  to  it  with  all  urgency. 

Nobody  ever  lived  since  Jesus  who  recognized  the  evil  in 
men  and  the  world  with  a  deeper,  tenderer  sorrow,  and  still 
retained  so  perfect  a  possession  and  enjoyment  of  his  own 
faith  and  hope  for  man  and  society,  in  God  and  his  gracious 
purposes.  There  is  no  despondency  in  his  complaints,  no 
disrespect  in  his  upbraidings,  nay,  no  impatience  in  his 
enthusiasm.  He  had  more  than  the  optimist's  content.  His 
confidence  is  not  in  powers  he  does  not  know,  in  a  God  he 
blindly  trusts,  in  purposes  he  cannot  sympathize  with  !     He 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  3 1 

has  grasped  the  nature  of  the  Divine  method,  apprehends  its 
implements,  uses  them,  and  knows  their  temper  and  edge. 
It  is  because  mind  is  at  work,  and  is  a  Divine  instrument ; 
because  truth  and  justice  exist  in  perfection  in  God,  and  are 
revealed  in  man's  conscience  ;  because  love  is  almighty,  and 
has  its  delegates  in  human  hearts,  —  that  he  expects  results 
from  civilization,  and  a  stage  of  progress  that  will  make  our 
present  state  appear  barbarous ;  and  that  he  appeals  so 
urgently,  so  boldly,  so  pleadingly,  to  men  to  keep  the 
weapons  of  the  Divine  armory  open  to  their  use,  and  make 
successful  war  on  the  lusts,  the  ignorance,  the  moral  sloth, 
the  dull  content  that  belate  the  spring  of  heaven  on  earth, 
and  perpetuate  the  winter  of  human  discontent.  If  other 
human  spirits  had  seen  the  vision  of  God's  powers  and  prom- 
ises in  the  human  soul  and  its  latent  capacities,  as  Channing 
saw  them,  he  would  never  have  seemed  visionary  and  extrav- 
agant. It  was  the  glory  of  this  burning  and  shining  light, 
that  the  fogs  of  our  fleshly  and  self-indulgent  civilization  — 
built  on  the  urgency  of  what  is  animal  and  superficial — did 
not  quench  its  own  exalted  beams.  Channing  was  an  ideal- 
ist in  essence.  The  ideal  was  for  him  the  only  real,  and  he 
treated  it  as  such.  So  did  his  Master  before  him ;  so  have 
all  the  prophets,  and  so  must  all  those  do  who  have  the 
heavenly  vision  of  God  in  their  eyes.  It  is  not  they  who  are 
fanatics  and  dreamers,  but  we  who  are  asleep,  or  with  only 
one  eye  yet  open.  They  see  and  know  what  man  is,  and  can 
prove  himself  to  be,  if  he  will  —  because  he  is  the  child  of 
God  by  a  real  spiritual  generation,  and  has  his  Father's  attri- 
butes at  his  command;  can  claim  and  exercise  his  moral 
freedom  and  his  rational  nature.  They  see  and  know  that  it 
is  nothing  new  and  strange  that  is  wanted  to  regenerate  the 
world ;  only  more  of  a  kind  they  already  have  and  know  ; 
more  of  the  truly  human  yet  divine  sentiment  of  justice  and 
love.     Given  a  million  hearts  and  minds,  a  million  wills  like 


J- 


CHANNING    CENTENARY, 


Channing's,  —  nay,  like  any  humble,  loving,  holy  follower  of 
Jesus, — and  instantly  an  unspeakable  regeneration  —  a  de- 
scent of  the  kingdom  of  God  —  appears!  Things  become 
easy,  that  were  before  impossible.  War,  that  we  cannot  kill 
by  force,  dies  of  shame.  Selfishness,  that  we  regard  as 
indigenous  and  indestructible,  turns  into  justice,  mercy,  and 
the  enjoyment  of  others'  happiness  as  the  truest  extension 
of  our  own,  and  disappears  from  the  world,  just  as  it  disap- 
pears in  every  truly  regenerate  household.  All  that  has  ever 
been  realized  in  any  one  man  is  possible  in  families ;  all  that 
has  ever  triumphed  in  families  may  triumph  in  communities. 
Every  true  community  predicts  the  universal  emancipation 
of  the  race ;  and  the  race,  glorified  out  of  its  own  nature,  — 
which  is  the  gift  of  God, — foretells  more  and  larger  and 
nobler  measures  of  perfectness  in  the  boundless  worlds  and 
times  yet  to  be  inherited. 

With  these  exalted  views  of  God's  freedom,  justice,  and 
goodness,  as  the  source  and  perpetual  inspiration  and  inex- 
haustible fountain  of  human  powers  and  hopes,  no  wonder 
that  Channing  had  the  profoundest  and  most  cheerful  faith 
in  the  earthly  and  the  celestial  destiny  of  humanity.  There 
was  no  caprice  in  the  purposes,  no  limitation  in  the  love,  no 
uncertainty  in  the  direction  of  the  Divine  Mind.  And 
equally  there  was  no  incapacity  to  receive  God's  truth,  no 
constitutional  antagonism  to  it,  no  essential  alienation,  no 
hopeless  break  with  God  in  human  nature, —  which  was 
indissolubly  connected  with  and  an  echo  or  image  of  the 
Divine  nature. 

The  clear  and  full  declaration,  or  rather  illumination,  of 
the  essential  relations  of  God  and  man  in  Christianity,  as 
founded  in  the  oneness  of  mind  and  the  sovereignty  of  moral 
truth,  made  the  gospel  of  Christ  the  joy  and  confidence  of 
Channing's  heart,  and  secured  it  the  allegiance  and  devotion 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  33 

of  his  life.  Because  Jesus  in  his  own  life  and  character,  and 
by  his  precepts  and  parables,  made  God's  truth  to  be  justice 
and  holiness  directed  by  Fatherly  love,  and  man's  life  to  be 
obedience  to  truth  and  duty,  which  he  was  not  only  capable 
of  rendering,  but  capable  of  enjoying,  and  finding  to  be  his 
chief  and  permanent  bliss ;  because  Jesus  made  God's 
Fatherhood  and  man's  sonship  correlative,  transcendent 
truths,  and  illustrated  them  in  his  own  person  and  character, 
Channing  fastened  his  faith  and  affections  upon  Christianity 
as  the  divinest  method  of  advancing  the  kingdom  of  God  on 
earth,  and  the  salvation  of  man  for  time  and  eternity.  As 
he  understood  or  interpreted  it,  it  was  in  exact  accordance 
with  what  the  highest  human  thought  and  feeling  would 
wish  it  to  be  and  expect  it  to  be.  It  met  and  satisfied  his 
intellect  and  his  conscience.  It  presented  God  in  the  most 
holy,  just,  and  merciful  character.  It  honored  humanity  by 
exhibiting  it  in  the  perfect  sinlessness  and  disinterested  love 
and  self-sacrifice  of  Jesus.  Its  respect  for  human  freedom 
was  complete ;  its  method,  not  force,  but  persuasion,  ex- 
ample, and  light.  It  made  certain  the  imi  mortality  for  which 
humanity  had  only  hoped,  and  by  this  as.urance  gave  to 
man  that  dignity  which  only  a  nature  destined  to  a  much 
fuller  unfolding  than  was  yet  possible  on  earth  could  pos- 
sess. It  blended  morality  and  piety  for  the  first  time  in  an 
indissoluble  unity.  It  rebuked  worldliness,  and  humbled  the 
pride  of  wealth  and  station,  and  the  worse  pride  of  intellect 
and  self-will.  It  abased  the  high  and  exalted  the  lowly.  It 
made  men  brothers  by  a  tie  stronger  than  blood,  whether  of 
race  or  of  family.  It  discountenanced  war  and  violence.  It 
founded  its  hopes  on  the  triumphs  of  mind  and  heart,  of 
moral  truth  and  love,  and  not  on  the  schools  of  science  and 
philosophy,  not  on  the  sword  nor  the  power  of  artificial 
organization.     It  was  the  noblest   and   most  exalted  honor 


34  CHANMNG    CENTENARY. 

ever  paid  to  humanity  that  God  in  Christ  addressed  not  its 
fears,  not  its  passions,  not  its  dogmatic  hopes,  not  its 
national  prejudices,  but  its  highest  and  holiest  powers,  its 
reason  and  its  conscience  —  what  is  universal,  uniting,  and 
elevating  —  what  is  godlike  and  divine  —  and  not  what  is 
attractive  to  self-interest,  gratifying  to  self-importance,  flat- 
tering to  selfish  hopes.  Christian  to  the  core,  Channing  had 
absolutely  nothing  of  the  Churchman  in  him, —  less,  possi- 
bly, than  would  have  been  wise, —  for  he  held  the  Church 
responsible  for  a  great  dogmatic  and  ecclesiastical  system, 
which  had  buried  the  simplicity  of  Christ's  gospel  beneath 
a  mass  of  opinions  and  customs  revolting  to  his  mind  and 
heart.  His  Christianity  was  essentially  that  which  fell  only 
from  Christ's  lips,  and  was  illustrated  in  his  life,  before  the 
Apostle  to  the  Gentiles  had  given  it  the  dogmatic  shape  of 
his  ingenious  intellect,  or  the  powers  of  the  world  had  seized 
it,  to  forge  from  it  a  new  instrument  of  political  order  and 
ambition. 

But,  simple  and  profoundly  rational  as  Channing's  ideas  of 
Christianity  were,  they  were  central  and  commanding,  and 
they  were  historical  and  supernatural.  For  him  Jesus  was 
no  mythic  growth  of  marvel-loving  times  ;  he  was  no  uncom- 
missioned, self-appointed  prophet,  owing  his  authority  to  his 
greater  wisdom  and  insight.  Channing  fully  believed  him 
to  be  sent,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  Church,  from  heaven 
—  from  God's  immediate  presence.  He  believed  him  to 
have  been  pre-existent.  He  thought  him  to  owe  his  sinless- 
ness  not  simply  to  his  nature,  but  to  his  special  and  personal 
relations  to  God, —  relations  which  we  do  not  yet  fully  enjoy. 
He  did  not  regard  him  chiefly  as  an  example  for  us,  in  his 
own  temptations  and  trials,  because  we  could  not  understand 
his  resources  nor  enter  into  his  experience.  But  it  would 
not  be  just  to  call  him  an  Arian  without  explanation,  for  he 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  35 

did  not  think  Christ's  nature  different  from  ours,  but  only 
the  same  in  a  higher  stage  of  development ;  nor  had  he  any 
perception  or  recognition  of  what  has  been  called  the  double 
nature  of  Christ, —  the  divine  and  the  human.  He  knew  but 
one  form  of  spiritual  nature, —  God's  own.  It  was  mind,  and 
mind  was  rational  and  moral.  It  might  have,  it  did  have, 
different  stages  of  development.  It  was  eternally  perfect  in 
God.  It  was  eternally  capable  of  development  in  his  chil- 
dren. God's  glory  was  eternally  to  give,  and  man's  eternally 
to  receive  it.  Jesus  Christ  had,  according  to  his  view,  a 
created  existence  ;  but  it  was  older  than  man's.  He  brought 
his  moral  and  spiritual  perfections  with  him.  He  did  not 
grow  into  them  as  we  grow,  nor  were  they  limited  by  what 
hinders  us.  I  am  bound,  in  simplicity,  to  say  that  I  do  not 
share  these  views  of  Christ's  pre-existence ;  nor  is  the  moral 
and  spiritual  exaltation  of  Jesus  in  my  view  dependent  upon 
the  place  or  the  date  of  his  first  creation  ;  nor  do  I  think 
that  Channing,  judging  by  the  views  his  disciples  have  since 
attained,  would  have  continued  in  them,  if  he  had  lived  to 
our  day.  His  own  spiritual  philosophy  ought,  it  seems  to 
me,  to  have  made  him,  of  all  men,  readiest  to  believe  that  a 
being  made  in  the  Divine  image  might,  occasionally  at  least, 
live  in  the  Divine  likeness  free  from  sin  ;  nor  can  I  see  what 
should  prevent  us  from  believing  that  spiritual  or  moral 
genius,  like  intellectual,  may  be  exceptional,  without  being 
abnormal.  We  do  not  think  Homer,  Aristotle,  Plato,  Mi- 
chael Angelo,  Shakespeare,  pre-existed,  because  their  genius 
is  unparalleled  :  why  Jesus  }  Genius,  poetic,  artistic,  execu- 
tive, is  always  unaccountable  and  always  exceptional ;  but  it 
is  never  other  or  more  than  human.  I  hope  and  trust  that 
other  sinless  beings  have  lived  besides  Jesus.  Beings,  at 
any  rate,  there  have  been  in  whom  no  sin  appeared  ;  and  I 
should  hold   it   a  great    deduction    from    my  reverence   for 


36  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Christ  and  luimanity  if  I  were  compelled  to  leave  Jesus  out 
of  the  ranks  of  our  common  manhood. 

But  let  us  not  forget  that  Channing's  views  about  the  pre- 
existence  and  the  miraculous,  in  which  he  was  a  firm  be- 
liever, and  the  difference  between  the  origin  of  Christianity 
and  other  religions,  only  emphasize  the  pure  rationality  and 
ethical  and  spiritual  quality  of  his  characteristic  views. "  Be- 
lieving in  the  miracles,  he  neither  magnified  them  nor  rested 
in  them.  Believing  in  the  pre-existence,  it  was  not  this 
that  gave  Christianity  its  dignity  and  importance  in  his  eyes, 
and  he  did  not  require  these  opinions  from  others  as  a  test 
of  their  faith.  They  were  not  of  the  essence  of  his  own 
faith.  It  was  not  the  mysterious  nor  the  abnormal  nor  the 
irrational ;  not  the  ontological  and  metaphysical,  nor  the 
supernatural,  that  he  valued.  It  was  what  was  rational,  in- 
telligible, rulable,  imitable.  He  accepted  certain  views 
which  we  might  reject,  as  being  to  him  most  in  accord  with 
the  record.  He  held  the  record  in  a  more  literal  respect 
than  modern  scholars  of  his  general  views.  But  I  feel 
bound  to  say  that  none  of  his  views  brought  him  any  nearer 
to  the  orthodoxy  of  the  visible  church  than  it  did  Parker  or 
Martineau  ;  and  that  those  who  use  him  to  disfavor  free  in- 
quiry or  to  buoy  up  sinking  dogmas,  or  to  stop  theological 
progress  cannot  be  careful  students  of  his  life  and  writings, 
and  do  not  illustrate  his  freedom.  He  had  no  such  views  of 
the  difiference  between  the  truly  human  and  the  truly  divine 
as  would  have  made  even  interesting  to  him  the  ordinary 
empty  questions  as  to  how  far  the  same  mind  can  partake  of 
the  divine  and  the  human.  That  question  was  settled  in  his 
fundamental  theory  of  the  identity  of  mind.  There  was  no 
difference,  except  in  degree  of  development,  between  Jesus 
and  other  men,  as  the  only  difference  in  nature  between  God 
and  man  is  that  God  is  eternally  father,  and  man  eternally  his 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT,  37 

child,  by  rational  and  moral  generation,  or  identity  of  nature 
and  derivation  of  essence.  Channing  never  permitted  theo- 
retical differences  to  diminish  or  weaken  the  significance  of 
moral  and  spiritual  agreements.  There  is  no  evidence  that 
he  valued  anybody  more  for  sharing  his  views,  or  depreciated 
anybody  for  opposing  or  denying  them,  if  in  a  good  spirit. 
If  he  had  a  choice,  it  was  for  the  society  of  those  who  had 
some  new  or  divergent  view  to  present.  He  had  a  wondrous 
confidence  in  the  power  of  truth  to  protect  itself ;  in  the 
safety  of  free  discussion  ;  and  in  the  possible  importance  of 
the  new  light  which  even  very  young  and  unrecognized  spir- 
its might  at  any  time  shed  upon  questions  regarded  by  most 
as  closed  and  settled.  Like  the  mothers  in  Israel,  who  re- 
garded every  son  as  the  possible  Messiah,  Channing  hailed 
every  independent  and  earnest  mind  as  the  possible  opener 
of  some  new  and  wide  door  into  the  kingdom  of  God.  He 
was  equally  tolerant  of  others'  opinions,  and  cautious  and 
docile  in  his  own.  He  thought  that  new  truth  was  yet  to 
break  out  of  God's  Word,  and  that  with  new  truth  would 
come  new  means  of  advancing  the  delayed  triumphs  of  the 
gospel,  which  were  identical  with  the  progress  of  true  civili- 
zation. 

It  is  easy  to  see  why,  with  these  views,  Channing  should 
be  claimed  both  by  conservatives  and  by  radicals  in  the  lib- 
eral ranks,  andwhy  even  enlightened  and  spiritual  believers 
of  the  so-called  orthodox  faiths  should  be  able  to  cull  from 
his  writings  passages  which  savor  of  the  old  system.  He 
was  no  destructive,  no  despiser  of  the  past ;  and  he  retained 
and  breathed  all  that  was  sacred  and  divine  in  the  piety  that 
had  been  associated  with  the  old  opinions.  Now  and  then,  it 
is  true,  as  in  his  famous  Baltimore  sermon,  and  in  his  equally 
great  New  York  sermon,  he  made  the  strongest,  most  direct, 
and  most  damaging  assaults  upon  the  Trinitarian  and  Cal- 


38  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

vinistic  systems  of  opinion, —  assaults  which,  for  courage, 
explicitness,  and  even  for  offensiveness  to  the  feelings  and 
prejudices  of  the  Christian  world,  have  never  been  exceeded. 
But  controversy  of  a  textual  or  ecclesiastical  kind  was  his 
strange  work.  He  dreaded  its  effects  upon  himself  and 
others,  and  only  engaged  in  it  when  driven  by  the  stress  of 
his  position  or  by  his  noble  necessity  to  vindicate  the  free- 
dom of  opinion  and  the  claims  to  respect  of  his  own  be- 
leaguered company  of  fellow-believers.  Controversy  bears 
no  greater  proportion  to  the  affirmative  part  of  his  writings 
than  Jesus'  own  contradiction  of  Jewish  and  Pharisaic  errors 
does  to  his  positive  teaching  of  religious  truth.  And  there- 
fore as  Jesus  has  continued  to  be  honored,  loved,  and  quoted 
by  rationalists  and  supernaturalists,  by  Catholics  and  Protest- 
ants, by  churchmen  and  anti-churchmen,  by  Calvinists  and 
Arminians  and  Pelagians,  because  the  bulk  of  his  teaching 
is  universal,  uncontroversial,  and  of  that  spirit  and  temper 
which  time  does  not  stale,  nor  place  color,  nor  other  differ- 
ences affect ;  so  Channing  has  been  placed,  by  a  wide  con- 
sent, in  the  calendar  of  the  Universal  Church, —  the  ortho- 
dox Christian  world  condoning  his  denial  of  several  of  its 
most  generally  received  opinions,  in  recollection  of  the  glo- 
rious testimony  he  bore  in  his  writings  and  his  life  to  the 
beauty  of  holiness,  the  might  of  divine  truth,  and  the 
transcendent  importance  of  the  Christian  life.  None  have 
been  able  to  escape  the  power  of  his  spirituality,  the  earnest- 
ness of  his  faith,  the  purity  and  elevation  of  his  character. 
It  has  deodorized  his  dogmatic  offenses,  and  made  his  con- 
troversial writings  forgotten  or  forgiven  by  all  except  those 
who  have  nothing  to  forgive  or  forget,  still  thinking  them 
the  necessary  and  invaluable  expression  of  theological  con- 
viction, on  which  his  own  vital  faith  and  his  lofty  personal 
character  rested,  and  in  which  the  Christian  world  will  finally 
unite  and  agree. 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  39 

I  have  already  given  more  time  than  I  intended  to  the  con- 
sideration of  Channing  as  a  theologian  and  the  essence  of  his 
opinions.  Let  us  now  turn  to  the  contemplation  of  his  gen- 
ius and  character,  or  the  measure  of  the  man  himself. 

In  some  respects,  his  views,  as  already  set  forth,  are  them- 
selves the  best  description  of  the  genius  and  character  of  the 
man.  Considering  the  date  of  his  settlement  in  the  Chris- 
tian ministry  and  the  prevailing  opinions  of  his  contempora- 
ries, the  depth  and  breadth  of  his  opinions,  the  freedom  of 
his  intellect,  and  the  unconventional,  undogmatic,  and  unec- 
clesiastical  character  of  his  thoughts  are  the  indications  of  a 
mind  of  the  first  order, —  possessing  an  authority  in  the 
clearness,  soberness,  and  calmness  of  its  own  vision  and  its 
own  convictions,  that  liberates  it  from  local,  accidental,  and 
merely  custom-made  bonds.  Rarely  has  any  religious  thinker 
appeared  who  was  less  obviously  the  child  of  his  time  and 
circumstances,  whether  in  his  opinions, 'his  spirit,  or  his  ca- 
reer. He  called  no  man  master.  The  religious  views  he 
held  were  not  in  accord  with  those  of  his  kindred  ;  he  was 
not  the  disciple  of  the  great  men  nearest  to  him  in  his  youth, 
like  Dr.  Hopkins  and  Dr.  Stiles,  whom  he  greatly  honored. 
He  was  not  the  echo  and  representative  of  the  prevailing 
moderation,  and  compromised  or  emasculated  orthodoxy,  the 
Arianism  or  obscurantism  of  the  growing  liberalism  of  his 
region  and  time.  He  was  utterly  out  of  sympathy  with 
Priestley  and  Belsham,  though  appreciative  of  the  merits  of 
Price,  and  probably  more  indebted  to  Butler  than  to  any 
single  mind.  He  honored  Buckminster,  but  did  not  partake 
the  scholastic  or  highly  literary  spirit,  which  in  his  time  was 
giving  to  Boston  the  name  of  the  modern  Athens,  and  was 
arraying  the  liberal  pulpit  in  the  silken  robes  of  academic 
culture, —  the  generation  of  mellifluous  pulpit  oratory,  mild 
and  correct,  which  Kirkland  illustrated  and  Everett  carried 
to  its  culminating  perfection. 


40  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

He  was  not  the  close  friend  and  companion  of  the  able 
and  cultivated  men  who  made  Boston  the  seat  and  centre  of 
conservatism  in  everything  except  theology, —  in  classicism, 
in  oratory,  in  rhetoric,  in  taste,  in  manners, —  and  in  theol- 
ogy, the  seat  of  a  cautious,  ethical,  or  secularized  divinity, — 
lukewarm  and  inoffensive,  difficult  to  define  and  impossible 
to  propagate.  Himself  exquisitely  refined,  sensitive  to  beauty 
and  sublimity  in  nature  and  literature  ;  fond  of  good  letters, 
read  in  poetry,  with  a  taste  for  the  classics  and  for  the  fine 
arts  ;  the  first  scholar  in  his  class,  and  at  eighteen  the  chosen 
writer  of  the  address  with  which  the  students  hailed  Presi- 
dent Adams  in  his  stiff  resistance  to  French  policy ;  with 
early  promise  of  high  success  in  the  legal  profession,  for 
which  his  friends  and  classmates  predestined  him,  or  else 
for  a  great  political  career, —  he  never  was  the  echo  or  the 
mouthpiece  of  the  special  tendencies  or  predilections  of  his 
day  and  generation,  or  of  the  city  where  he  spent  his  life. 
And  it  was  because  his  impulse  came  from  a  higher  source 
than  any  local  or  temporary  stream.  So  far  as  he  was  not 
the  child  of  God,  he  must  be  pronounced  the  son  of  his  own 
genius,  and  not  of  his  time  and  parentage  and  neighborhood, 
his  sect  or  his  party.  And  his  genius  was  one  of  intense 
self-possession, —  making  his  own  thoughts  more  engrossing 
and  commanding  than  any  thoughts  he  found  in  books,  or 
any  influences  that  were  about  him.  He  found  within  him- 
self ideas,  feelings,  faculties,  that  fastened  his  attention  upon 
themselves,  not  as  being  Jiis  in  the  egotistic  sense,  but  as 
being  wonderful  suggestions  and  keys,  the  sublime  represen- 
tatives of  what  he  shared  with  humanity  and  with  God. 
What  he  was  and  saw  and  felt  in  his  own  nature  gave  him 
his  inspiration,  his  mission,  and  his  special  career.  There 
was  nothing  indirectly  derived,  second-hand,  or  traditional, 
and   merely  bred  of  local  contagion,  in   his  views  or  in  his 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  4I 

methods.  He  was  an  original  force,  commanded  by  his  vision 
and  conviction,  and  from  a  height  which  no  fortresses  of 
venerable  custom  or  of  elegant  prejudice  overlooked,  much 
less  overawed.  More  individual  than  if  his  individuality  had 
not  lacked  all  egotism  and  all  eccentricity,  all  caprice  and 
self-allowance,  he  had  little  power  of  co-operation,  little  faith 
in  organization,  and  little  dependence  on  others'  sympathy 
and  applause,  and  as  little  susceptibility  to  censure.  The 
most  sanctified  of  his  clerical  contemporaries,  he  was  the  least 
professional  in  his  temper  and  spirit ;  the  most  Christian  in 
his  heart  and  life,  the  least  ecclesiastical.  He  loved  Boston 
best  of  all  the  world, —  if  Newport  may  not  to-day  claim  the 
warmest  place  in  his  heart, —  yet  he  was  not  a  Bostonian  in 
the  most  characteristic  sense  of  that  term.  He  did  not 
share  its  distrust  for  genius  untrained  in  academic  lore  ;  its 
bated  breath  for  new  men  not  baptized  into  Harvardian 
waters ;  its  impatience  with  strength,  if  it  were  shaggy  and 
rugged ;  its  marvellous  solidity  of  social  conformity,  and  the 
breeding  in  and  in  of  its  tastes  and  convictions.  Respecta- 
bility, good  family,  self-consistency,  decorum,  moderation, 
the  lares  around  that  honored  hearth,  were  not  his  household 
gods.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  disparage  the  noble  self-suffi- 
ciency and  compact  perfectness  of  the  place  of  my  own  birth 
and  breeding.  But,  however  much  it  may  have  been  or  may 
still  be  deplored,  it  is  due  to  the  right  measurement  of  Chan- 
ning  to  say  that  he  was  not  the  typical  Bostonian  of  his  day 
or  of  any  day,  and  that  what  he  did  in  and  for  Boston  was 
usually  against  the  grain  of  its  characteristic  and  governing 
tastes  and  wishes.  He  gave  his  genius  to  Boston  and  man- 
kind. He  did  not  shape  it  to  suit  Boston  or  his  generation, 
but  to  satisfy  his  nature  and  conscience,  and  to  honor  God 
and  his  service  among  men. 

The  same  may  be   said  of   his  great  though  younger  con- 


42  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

temporaries,  Emerson,  Parker,  Garrison.  It  was  a  fortunate 
thing  for  Channing  that  he  was  driven  to  Virginia,  the  old 
heart  of  the  countsy,  to  earn  his  independence,  and  there  to 
settle  his  opinions  and  his  profession.  There,  in  comparative 
solitude,  and  beyond  the  reach  of  local  influences,  and  even 
natal  bonds,  he  found  himself  (not  that  he  had  ever  wan- 
dered), because  there,  with  his  manhood  just  attained,  con- 
curred the  first  great  struggle  of  his  mind  and  heart  with  its 
own  questions,  in  a  meditative  separation  from  all  that  could 
have  biased  him  or  warped  him  from  being  other  or  less  than 
himself.  True,  in  that  protracted  season  of  profound  reverie 
and  meditation,  in  which  his  soul  was  feathering  and  taking 
wing  and  direction,  he  lost  his  bodily  health  permanently. 
He  was  adding  to  his  conscientious  labor,  as  a  tutor  and 
teacher,  the  tasks  of  a  profound  self-questioner  and  inquirer 
of  the  Spirit  of  God.  He  found  his  soul,  and  saw  the  great 
lines  that  marked  its  significance,  and  indicated  his  sources 
of  power  and  usefulness,  and  fixed  his  calling  and  self-dedica- 
tion to  God  and  Christ  and  humanity  ;  he  lost  his  health,  and 
that  finally.  It  is  important  to  connect  the  two  facts.  They 
are  curiously  illustrative  of  the  disrespect  in  which  he  held 
all  endeavors  to  associate  matter  and  mind  in  any  close  mu- 
tual dependency  ;  and  he  was  himself  the  minimum  of  body 
and  the  maximum  of  mind.  But  it  is  well  to  remember  that 
Channing  had  been  athletic,  joyous,  springy,  and  gay,  manly 
and  bold  to  a  fault  in  physical  courage  in  his  boyhood  and 
college  days ;  that  there  was  never  any  other  asceticism  or 
melancholy  or  other  worldliness  about  him  than  necessarily 
belong  to  invalids  who  have  to  study  their  health  continually; 
and  that,  if  his  poor  physique  compelled  him  to  live  a  good 
deal  in  solitude,  to  avoid  too  much  exertion  in  any  form,  and 
to  fix  his  mind  upon  his  special  pursuit,  it  never  took  any 
robustness    from    his   courage,  dignity   from    his    manhood, 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  43 

sympathy  from  his  love  of  children,  the  open  air,  nature,  and 
womanhood.  There  is  no  ill  health  in  his  lusty  hopes  of 
humanity,  in  his  unvaletudinarian  admiration  for  those  who 
could  defy  and  resist  wrong  and  oppression,  blind  custom,  or 
tyrannical  use  and  wont.  His  love  of  the  beaches  of  your 
island  in  the  time  of  storms,  where  he  said  he  felt  his  soul 
expand  and  take  on  the  power  of  the  elemental  strife,  should 
teach  us  how  little  the  softness  of  his  tissue  or  the  worn 
fibres  of  his  muscles  communicated  their  weakness  to  the 
cords  of  his  intellectual  or  his  moral  nature.  In  fact,  his 
soul  would  have  animated  a  giant,  and  set  forth  a  Viking,  in 
its  magnificent  courage  and  sweep  of  life. 

I  am  struck  with  nothing  more  than  the  comprehensive 
grasp  of  his  thoughts.  They  bind  God  and  man  together, 
the  past  and  the  future ;  and,  high  and  holy  as  they  are 
wide  and  deep,  they  are  never  filmy  and  airy ;  always  solid, 
ready  to  bear  the  tread  of  the  strongest  reason  ;  full  of 
sense,  if  full  of  light ;  enthusiastic,  but  never  eccentric, 
never  wild.  His  feet  are  steady  on  the  ground,  if  his  eye 
and  arm  are  reaching  for  the  skies. 

He  had  been  addicted  to  reverie,  as  all  ideal  natures  are, 
in  his  earlier  manhood ;  but  the  mist  quickly  consolidated 
into  a  cloud,  out  of  which  shot  bolts  of  prodigious  force  and 
directness.  His  greatest,  most  distinctive  gift  —  his  instru- 
ment and  his  method  alike  —  was  the  power  of  an  almost 
unequalled  concentration  of  attention  upon  his  own  thoughts 
and  inward  experiences,  afterwards  enlarged  into  the  faculty 
of  fixing  his  mind,  with  an  absorbing  exclusion  of  other 
themes,  upon  any  subject  he  chose  to  meditate  and  examine. 
He  brooded,  with  a  patience  that  Nature  does  not  equal  in 
her  winged  kind,  over  the  seminal  suggestions  he  found  in 
the  sacred  nest  of  his  own  soul.  Other  men  have  had  his 
thoughts;  nay,  happily,  they  are  so  native  to  humanity  that 


44  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

they  must  always  lack  originality.  It  was  what  they  grew 
to,  under  his  prolonged,  persistent  meditation,  that  made 
them  new,  and  other,  and  more  fruitful  than  they  have 
proved  in  kindred  minds  lacking  his  unwearied  and  fixed 
power  and  habit  of  contemplation. 

This,  too,  is  the  source  of  the  monotony  of  which  some 
complain  in  his  writings.  There  is  not  room  enough  in  the 
mind  for  the  concurrent  and  full  expansion  of  many  ideas, 
as  important  and  sublime  as  those  that  occupied  his  great 
soul.  A  few  master-thoughts — the  greatest  that  can  em- 
ploy the  human  soul  —  had  early  fastened  his  attention; 
they  never  ceased  to  yield  new  fruits  to  meditation.*  He 
never  got  to  the  end  of  them,  or  was  fully  content  with  the 
expression  he  gave  them.  He  returns  to  them  again  and 
again.  He  applies  them.  They  are  always  as  useful  as 
they  are  engaging,  always  as  much  the  ground  of  his  action 
as  of  his  feeling.  They  are  thoughts  of  God,  of  man,  of 
freedom,  of  holiness,  of  public  justice,  of  the  elevation  of 
the  humble,  of  the  enrichment  of  the  poor !  They  are  not 
thoughts  to  amuse,  to  please,  to  dazzle  ;  thoughts  for  a  culti- 
vated class  or  a  fastidious  appetite ;  thoughts  whose  aim  is 
to  show  off  the  thinker's  skill  or  taste  or  originality ;  they 
are  not  clothed  in  rhetoric,  nor  made  to  suit  the  love  of 
variety.  They  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  chosen  thoughts ; 
but  rather  thoughts  so  self-urged  and  spontaneous  that  they 
seem  the  special  hardy  natives  of  the  soil,  too  vigorous  and 
too  exhausting  of  the   sap  to  allow  any  lesser  thoughts,  or 

•  Mr.  Browning,  in  his  "  Paracelsus,"  describes  this  experience  :  — 
"  So  that,  when  quailing  at  the  mighty  range 
Of  secret  truths  which  yearn  for  birth,  I  haste 
To  contemplate  undazzled  some  one  truth, 
Its  bearings  and  effects  alone  —  at  once 
What  was  a  speck  expands  into  a  star. 
Asking  a  life  to  pass  exploring  thus." 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  45 

any  variety  of  thoughts,  to  spring  up  in  the  neighborhood. 
The  solemn  pause  and  measured  formality  with  which  in  his 
writings  he  announces  his  passing  from  one  to  another 
thought  exhibits  and  illustrates  the  awe  with  which  he  was 
himself  overcome  in  the  presence  of  his  convictions.  They 
hardly  seemed  his  own,  and  he  introduced  them  as  if  he 
were  presenting  the  lofty  ambassadors  of  some  sacred  power, 
for  the  obeisance  of  the  company  met  to  receive  them.  It 
is  the  greatness  and  glory  of  only  the  rarest  souls  to  be  thus 
filled  with  a  few  themes,  that  claim  and  crowd  all  the  room 
our  nature  has, — thoughts  so  exalted,  so  peerless,  and  so 
self-sustained  that  they  neither  allow  nor  require  any  train- 
bearers  or  attendants.  Channing  did  not  lack  native  versa- 
tility, aptness  for  many  things,  taste  and  capacity  for  litera- 
ture, philosophy,  science,  art,  poetry,  practical  affairs,  politics, 
statesmanship,  natural  history,  society;  that  he  was  capable 
of  wit,  satire,  humor,  is  evident  enough  to  those  who  make  a 
study  of  his  biography  —  almost  an  autobiography  —  by  the 
hand  of  his  favorite  nephew.  It  was  no  lack  of  nice  obser- 
vation, of  practical  interest  in  daily  life,  of  sympathy  with 
common  things,  of  physical  sensibility  or  even  manly  pas- 
sion, that  made  him  such  a  uniform  or  one-keyed  organ  of  a 
few  great  thoughts.  It  is  as  plain  as  light  that  he  was  no 
mystic,  no  mere  temperamental  saint,  no  vestal  in  disguise 
—  not  even  a  man  to  whom  evil  was  unknown,  and  the  world 
naturally  repulsive,  and  therefore  carefully  veiled  from  sight. 
He  had  none  of  the  scholar's  learned  ignorance,  the  saint's 
pious  inhumanity,  the  devotee's  upturned  eyeballs.  There 
was  in  the  odor  of  his  sanctity  no  savor  of  any  ecclesiastical 
herbs,  no  artificial,  sickly  perfume  of  funeral  tuberoses, 
rosemary,  and  myrrh.  His  seriousness  was  habitual,  and 
caused  by  the  essential  solemnity  of  his  thoughts.  He  did 
not  often  smile,  and   seldom  laughed ;  but  it  was  not  from 


46  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

want  of  cheerfulness  or  incapacity  for  humor,  but  only  from 
the  prepossession  of  his  mind  by  grave  and  intensely  inter- 
esting themes.  He  thought  himself  one  of  the  happiest  of 
men,  and  his  chiklren  testify  to  the  vivacity  and  cheerful- 
ness of  his  domestic  life.  But  he  was  made  happy  and 
happier,  every  year  he  lived,  by  his  greater  realization  of 
our  wonderful  nature,  and  its  relations  to  its  generous  and 
glorious  Source,  his  high  and  cheerful  views  of  human  prog- 
ress on  earth,  and  its  sublime  destiny  beyond  the  skies. 

It  was  a  grand  peculiarity  of  this  great  man  so  to  have 
reconciled  his  ideas  with  his  immediate  life  and  duty  that 
his  life  was  his  religion,  and  his  religion  his  life.  He  did 
not  wear  his  faith  and  piety  as  a  professional  robe ;  it  was 
his  home  attire  and  his  working-dress.  He  did  not  keep 
his  thoughts  for  meditation,  except  as  far  as  meditation  is 
itself  life  and  action,  but  for  use  and  application.  He  could 
not  be  caught  in  undress.  He  was  the  same  exalted  person, 
at  home  and  abroad,  in  ordinary  conversation  and  in  the  pul- 
pit. Indeed,  Dr.  Dewey  —  whose  testimony  comes  nearer 
to  that  of  a  peer,  though  his  is  a  different  variety  of  the 
order  of  greatness,  than  that  of  any  close  witness  of  Chan- 
ning  —  has  told  me  that  his  talk  was  greater,  and  more 
exhaustive  and  exhausting,  than  his  writings  or  his  preach- 
ing;  upon  the  same  themes,  just  as  lofty  and  just  as  grave, 
but  more  prolonged  and  more  glowing.  In  short,  the  nearer 
you  got  to  this  burning  and  shining  light,  the  more  you 
found  it  to  be  not  painted  flame,  but  real  fire ;  not  light 
only,  but  heat.  It  went  far  to  consume  Channing  himself, 
who  lay  a  live  coal  upon  the  altar ;  and  it  was  apt  to  scorch 
and  shrivel  even  the  stoutest  souls  that  stood  near  it  while 
it  steadily  burnt,  not  out,  but  on.  It  was  the  utter  genuine- 
ness of  his  faith,  the  power  it  had  over  himself,  that  made 
it  so  effectual  over  others,  and  gives  it  such  might  to-day. 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  47 

Of  his  preaching,  I  was  myself  the  glad  and  fortunate 
beneficiary,  and  am  among  the  not  too  many  living  witnesses 
to  its  transcendent  power.  There  is  no  spot  in  Boston  so 
sacred  to  me  as  the  profaned  site  of  the  old  Federal  Street 
Church  ;  for  thither,  a  youth  of  twenty-one,  I  was  wont  to 
repair  (and  it  was  a  walk  of  several  miles)  every  other  Sun- 
day morning,  for  two  critical  years  of  my  life  and  theological 
studies,  to  hear  Channing  preach  !  There  were  excellent 
preachers  to  be  heard  much  nearer  home ;  but  there  was 
that  in  Channing's  mind  and  soul,  in  his  voice,  manner,  and 
look,  that  separated  him  from  them,  as  the  prophet  is  sepa- 
rated from  the  priest.  Indeed,  he  did  7iot preach,  in  the  ordi- 
nary sense  of  the  word.  Gowned  as  he  was,  and  obedient 
to  all  the  decorums  of  the  pulpit,  it  was  not  the  preacher, 
but  the  apostle,  you  saw  and  heard.  Even  in  the  pulpit,  he 
lived  the  things  he  saw  and  said.  The  greatness  of  human 
nature  shone  in  his  beautiful  brow,  sculptured  with  thought, 
and  lighted  from  within  ;  his  eye,  so  full  and  blue,  was  lus- 
trous with  a  vision  of  God,  and  seemed  almost  an  open  door 
into  the  shining  presence.  His  voice,  sweet,  round,  un- 
strained, full,  though  low,  lingered  as  if  with  awed  delay 
upon  the  words  that  articulated  his  dearest  thoughts,  and 
trembled  with  an  ever-restrained  but  most  contagious  emo- 
tion. He  was  intensely  present  in  his  thoughts,  as  if  just 
born  from  his  soul,  and  dressed  from  his  lips,  although  he 
usually  (always  in  my  experience)  spoke  from  a  manuscript. 
But,  while  his  individuality  was  inexi^ressibly  commanding, 
it  gave  no  suggestion  of  the  love  of  personal  influence.  He 
used  the  word  ''  I  "  with  the  freedom  of  the  master,  but  it 
conveyed  the  sense,  "  not  I,  but  the  Father  in  me  ;  not  I, 
but  the  truth  I  speak ;  and  not  you,  but  the  nature  you 
represent ;  not  you,  but  humanity  and  God  in  you  and  in 
us ! "      He  rose  slowly,  read  a   hymn,  and   began    his    dis- 


48  CIIANNING    CENTENARY, 

course  (for  seldom  in  my  clay  was  he  able  to  spare  much  of 
his  strength  for  the  preliminary  services,  conducted  by  his 
colleague)  on  a  plane  so  level  to  the  feet  of  the  simplest  of 
his  hearers  that  few  noticed  the  difificulty  of  the  slow  but 
steady  ascent  he  always  made,  carrying  his  rapt  hearers 
with  him  by  the  power  of  his  thought,  the  calm  insistance 
of  his  conviction,  and  the  solemn  earnestness  of  his  spirit, 
until  they  found  themselves  standing  at  a  height  from  which 
visions  of  divine  things,  in  their  true  proportions  and  real 
perspective,  became  easy  and  spontaneous.  There  was  no 
muscular  strain  or  contortion  in  his  limbs  or  face  or  voice  ; 
no  excitement  of  a  fleshly  origin  ;  no  false  fervor  or  false 
emphasis ;  no  loss  of  perfect  dignity  and  self-possession. 
And  there  was  little  in  the  words  themselves  to  fix  atten- 
tion, except  their  purity  and  grace.  It  was  the  subject  that 
came  forward  and  remained  in  the  memory.  He  left  you 
not  thinking  of  him,  nor  of  his  rhetoric.  He  had  no  start- 
ling figures,  no  brilliant  fancies,  no  sharp  points  ;  little  for 
admiration  or  praise ;  everything  for  reflection,  for  inspira- 
tion, and  for  illumination.  There  was  one  other  peculiarity 
in  his  preaching.  He  preached  only  on  great  themes,  and 
this  made  his  sermons  always  timely,  for  great  subjects 'are 
ever  in  order.  So  profoundly  helpful,  so  inspiring  was  his 
preaching,  that  I,  for  one,  lived  on  it,  from  fortnight  to  fort- 
night, and  went  to  it  every  time,  with  the  expectation  and 
the  experience  of  receiving  the  bread  of  heaven  on  which  I 
was  to  live  and  grow,  until  the  manna  fell  again  ;  and  men 
of  all  ages  had  much  the  same  feeling. 

When,  for  the  first  time,  I  saw  Channing  out  of  the  pulpit, 
I  was  as  much  surprised  at  his  diminutive  form  as  if,  expect- 
ing a  giant,  I  had  met  a  dwarf !  He  had  seemed  to  me  a 
large  and  tall  man  in  his  pulpit ;  but  I  soon  found  that, 
slight  and  low  as  his  frame  was,  nearness  and  familiarity 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  49 

took  nothing  from  its  dignity,  and  suggested  nothing  fragile 
or  weak.  Indeed,  his  attenuated  and  lowly  figure  really 
increased  the  sense  of  his  moral  majesty  and  intellectual 
eminence.  His  presence  was  more  awful,  simple  and  gentle 
as  he  was,  than  that  of  any  human  being  I  ever  saw.  It 
forbade  familiarity,  silenced  garrulity,  checked  ease,  and  had 
something  of  the  effect  of  a  supernatural  visitor ;  awfng 
levity,  and  making  even  common  speech,  or  speech  at  all, 
difficult.  He  was  so  unconscious  of  this  effect,  so -little 
willing  to  produce  it,  so  anxious  to  make  others  free  and 
communicative,  that  it  became  pathetic  to  witness  the  paral- 
ysis of  tongue  and  motion  that  usually  fell  on  those  whom 
he  in  vain  tried  to  set  at  liberty  from  his  overpowering  per- 
sonality. Doubtless  there  were  familiar  and  domestic  friends, 
and  perhaps  m^n  who  had  grown  up  with  him,  that  escaped 
this  awe,  and  overcame  this  distance  ;  and  children  did  not 
seem  to  feel  it ;  but  just  in  proportion  to  the  sense  and 
sensibility  of  young  men  and  women  was  it  irresistible. 

I  have  said  that  Channing  was  not  the  kind  of  preacher 
Boston  usually  made  and  welcomed.  Fortunately  he  did 
not  settle,  of  choice,  in  a  congregation  most  characteristic 
of  Boston,  —  not  in  Brattle  Street,  where  he  was  called,  but 
in  Federal  Street,  then  comparatively  inconspicuous,  —  and 
so  he  made,  by  degrees,  out  of  a  less  fixed  and  wool-dyed 
class  of  citizens,  a  congrega<tion  of  his  own,  to  which  he 
communicated  much  of  his  own  spirit  and  something  of  his 
own  views.  But  it  was  in  his  character  of  philanthropist 
that  he  had  most  to  do  with  shaping  a  new  Boston,  and  most 
to  contend  with  ;  and  there  his  personal  courage  and  com- 
manding individuality  were  most  displayed.  I  must  not  go 
at  length  into  the  history  of  his  relations  to  the  politics,  the 
pauperism,  the  anti-slavery  agitation,  the  questions  of  free 
speech  and  free  opinion,  which  are  really  the  places  where 
his  character  and  even  his  views  are  best  illustrated.     But 


CHANNING    CKNTENAKY. 


I  should  wholly  fail  in  the  completeness  even  of  an  outline 
of  Channin*;,  if  I  did  not  trace  the  line  of  his  course  upon 
these  public  questions. 

Everybody  knows  how  much  of  Channing's  mind  and 
heart,  courage  and  inspiration,  went  into  the  application  of 
his  views, —  God's  glorious  purpose  in  man's  creation,  the 
di^iity  of  human  nature  and  the  sacredness  of  freedom,  of 
will,  thought,  speech,  and  conduct, —  to  the  working  institu- 
tions of  government,  of  business,  of  charity,  of  domestic  life. 
He  was  above  all  things  a  man,  3.nd  then  only  a  minister;  and 
no  zeal  or  fidelity  to  his  profession,  incompatible  with  or 
overriding  his  duties  as  a  man,  could  have  satisfied  him. 
Indeed,  a  Christian  minister  in  his  eyes  was  only  a  man, 
realizing  under  Christ's  teaching  the  full  dignity  of  humanity, 
and  working  for  its  rights  and  its  development  in  the  sphere 
of  our  present  existence.  Any  effort  to  shut  him  up  in  the 
pulpit  or  within  the  clerical  profession,  or  to  cut  off  his  right, 
his  duty,  his  opportunity  of  making  his  moral  and  spiritual 
convictions  forces  in  society  at  large,  would  necessarily  have 
been  unavailing.  He  knew  no  distinction  between  his  man- 
hood and  his  ministry,  and  accepted  no  rules  as  binding  on 
him  which  were  not  binding  on  all.  His  field  was  the  world, 
his  congregation  the  human  race ;  his  office  an  ordination  to 
advance,  protect,  and  serve  all  the  higher  interests  of  his 
kind.  There  was  nothing  strictly  new  in  this  position.  All 
the  noblest  and  greatest  men  have  been  distinguished  by  a 
certain  refusal  to  observe  conventional  bounds,  or  to  make 
their  special  profession  or  calling  less  than  that  of  servant  of 
all  truth  and  all  good.  Some  of  the  greatest  poets  have  been 
also  theologians ;  great  lawyers,  publicists ;  and  great  physi- 
cians, philanthropists;  great  artists,  thinkers  and  reformers. 

New  England  never  lacked  men  in  the  ministry  who  felt  it 
their  right  and  duty  to  guide  and  watch  over  political  senti- 
ment ;  and  Boston  had  had  her  Chauncy  and  Mayhew,  not  to 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  5 1 

speak  of  her  Eliot  and  Mathers.  But,  in  ordinary  times,  the 
tendency  of  all  professions  is  to  become  special,  and  to  have 
an  ethics  each  of  its  own.  Unprofessional,  unclerical,  are 
words  of  significant  meaning.  No  doubt,  too,  there  is  a 
wholesome  instinct  which  teaches  men  that  every  profession 
is  a  jealous  mistress,  and  demands  the  exclusive  use  of  the 
time  and  talents  of  its  followers,  and  that  a  division  of  labor 
and  a  certain  mental  and  moral  uniform  peculiar  to  each  best 
favor  the  interest  of  all.  Departure  from  this  practical  rule 
is  only  justified  when  those  who  break  it  are  clearly  seen  to 
be  men  of  exceptional  greatness,  and  competency  to  larger 
influence  and  larger  work  than  belong  to  any  one  calling  in 
life.  Channing  was  such  a  man, —  a  philosopher,  a  philan- 
thropist, a  statesman,  a  poet, —  nothing  less  than  the  general 
condition  and  prospects  of  the  whole  race  could  engage  his 
attention,  or  limit  his  sense  of  responsibleness.  He  was 
accordingly  an  observer  and  student  of  other  countries,  and 
their  moral,  social,  and  political  prospects.  He.was  deeply 
interested  in  all  experiments  for  increasing  popular  intelli- 
gence, improving  the  condition  of  the  poor,  or  widening  polit- 
ical rights.  He  understood  the  relations  and  influence  of 
men  and  events  across  national  boundaries.  The  French, 
the  English,  the  German  influence  upon  humanity  and  the 
fortunes  of  Christianity  closely  concerned  him,  at  a  time 
when  few  could  see  over  the  fences,  which,  however  they 
narrow  the  view,  do  not  prevent  the  circulation  of  a  common 
human  atmosphere.  And,  in  the  same  way,  he  was  profoundly 
interested,  at  a  time  when  interest  was  rare,  in  the  mutual 
relations  of  the  different  classes  of  society.  Singularly 
tempted  to  devote  himself  to  his  own  excellent  and  fortunate 
class, —  refined,  decorous,  solid,  and  satisfied,  and  all  the  more 
tempted  by  the  fact  that  his  profession  justified  and  expected 
a  certain  confinement  within  parochial  bounds, —  he  could 
not  limit  his  views  or  his  sympathies  or  his  obligation  within 


52  CnANNIN(;    CENTF.NARY. 

ail}'  class  lines,  lie  rcvertcvl  to  the  original  office  of  the 
ministry,  when  men  were  not  settled  over  congregations,  but 
sent  forth  api>stles  of  truth  and  mercy  to  all  men.  And 
although  he  was  precluded,  by  his  want  of  health,  from  active 
missionary  or  active  })ublic  labors,  and  lived  a  peculiarly  set- 
tled and  uniform  life,  his  mind,  his  heart  travelled  widely,  and 
his  pen  was  a  missionary  and  a  public  servant  that  recog- 
nized the  claims  of  the  whole  world. 

Few  men,  in  this  country  or  any  other,  have  been  as  univer- 
sal in  their  survey,  their  aims,  their  breadth  of  view,  and  the 
comprehensiveness  of  their  purposes  as  Channing.  With  the 
tastes  and  habits  of  a  recluse,  he  was  mentally  a  cosmopolite 
and  a  publicist.  The  least  of  a  partisan  and  a  politician,  he 
had  all  the  feelings  and  all  the  capacity  of  a  statesman. 
Limited  by  his  physical  fragility  to  a  narrow  walk  of  personal 
observation  and  intercourse,  he  went  in  spirit  and  by  the  aid 
of  his  intellectual  and  moral  sympathies  into  the  homes  and 
shops  and  fields,  and  felt  the  closest  and  warmest  interest  in 
the  trials,  sorrows,  wrongs,  and  exposures  of  the  common 
people,  and  especially  those  most  overlooked.  Tuckerman, 
his  most  intimate  friend,  the  apostle  to  the  poor  of  Boston, 
found  in  no  one  so  patient  and  so  helpful  a  supporter  and 
admirer  as  Channing,  who  envied  his  skill,  his  success,  and 
his  delight  in  this  gracious  service.  His  advice  and  his  en- 
couragement to  the  laboring  classes,  which  reached  many 
countries,  drew  forth  expressions  of  gratitude  that  gave  Chan- 
ning more  satisfaction  than  he  could  receive  from  the  admira- 
tion of  literary  critics,  or  the  crowds  of  cultivated  people  that 
hung  on  his  lips.  The  ministry  to  the  poor  in  Boston  owed 
most  of  its  permanent  interest  to  his  direction  and  encouf- 
agement.  He  was  profoundly  concerned  for  the  elevation, 
the  happiness,  the  substantial  good  of  the  humbler  ranks  of 
people.  It  was  not  a  professiopal,  technical  interest  of  the 
ordinary  ministerial  kind,  lest  their  souls  should  be  lost,  but 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  53 

a  sad  sense  of  what  they  were  losing  in  not  knowing,  serving, 
and  loving  God. 

There  were  none  of  the  materials  for  a  fanatic  in  Chan- 
ning  ;  and  yet  fanatics  have  seldom  gone  as  far  in  their  mad- 
ness or  narrowness  of  view  as  Channing  went  in  his  sobriety 
and  comprehensiveness.  He  hoped  and  expected  more  of  all 
men  than  perfectionists,  socialists,  and  idealogists  have  looked 
for  and  demanded  ;  but  he  had  the  most  practical  sense  of 
the  difficulties  in  the  way.  He  had  the  patience  of  God  and 
geologic  time  with  the  slowness  of  the  advance.  Nobody 
could  have  told  him  much  about  the  obstructions  and  trying 
conditions,  under  the  sense  of  which  most  men  give  up  the 
problem.  He  was  hopeful  in  full  view  of  all  obstacles,  and 
active  and  earnest  in  spite  of  his  knowledge  how  long  and 
how  much  action  and  effort  would  be  required  for  an  indefi- 
nite time  to  come. 

His  course  in  regard  to  the  anti-slavery  movement  is  per- 
haps the  best  illustration  of  his  character  as  an  humanitarian 
and  a  citizen.  By  position,  by  taste,  and  by  associates,  he 
was  one  of  the  men  likely  to  feel  most  what  was  called  the 
violence,  the  narrowness,  and  the  vulgarity  of  that  movement, 
as  it  first  presented  itself  in  Massachusetts.  Its  starters  and 
supporters  outraged  the  taste,  the  ethics,  the  customs  of  the 
best  people.  It  looked  wild,  fierce,  revolutionary,  impious, 
much  as  the  earliest  pretentions  of  Christianity  must  have 
seemed  to  devout  and  influential  Jews  in  the  Holy  City.  As 
a  rule,  Christian  ministers  gave  a  wide  berth  to  its  advocates. 
Channing  regarded  it  doubtless  with  distaste,  and  turned  a 
cold  shoulder  upon  its  first  apostles,  from  genuine  doubts  of 
its  being  in  right  hands,  or  advocated  in  a  legal  and  Christian 
way.  In  this,  he  only  exhibited  the  uniform  caution  of  his 
conscientious  mind,  which  never  allowed  itself  to  be  swept 
off  the  base  of  its  own  solid  judgment.  It  was  always  his 
judgment — which  was  his  conscience — that  had  to  be  set 


54  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

on  fire,  not  his  feelings,  and  it  did  not  catch  prematurely  ; 
and  when  it  did,  it  burnt  with  a  flame  that  could  not  be 
quenched. 

When  Channing  began  —  and  it  was  far  earlier  than  any 
of  the  sober  and  weighty  minds  about  him  —  to  see  and  feel 
what  was  involved  in  the  anti-slavery  cause  ;  what  this  fierce 
indignation  was, — the  cry  of  outraged  justice  and  down- 
trampled  humanity  ;  what  a  holy  sense  of  wrong  done  to  the 
human  soul  lay  at  the  bottom  of  the  wrath  that  made  relig 
ious,  social,  and  political  conventionalities,  so  far  as  they 
condoned  or  supported  slavery,  objects  of  anger  and  deri- 
sion,—  he  transferred  his  sympathies  from  the  conservative 
and  popular  side  of  Boston  taste  and  feeling  to  the  radical, 
the  unpopular,  the  odious  side  of  the  anti-slavery  reformers. 
I  do  not  think  he  counted  the  cost  of  this,  or  of  any  course 
he  ever  took  ;  but  he  knew  as  well  as  any  man  the  way  in 
which  it  would  be  received  by  his  friends  and  lovers.  His 
difficulties  were  never  those  of  the  politician,  the  sectarian, 
or  the  time-server.  His  slowness  was  always  his  desire  to 
be  right  with  God  and  his  conscience  ;  his  quickness,  the 
zeal  he  had  in  the  service  of  truth  and  duty,  the  moment  he 
knew  them.  What  services  he  rendered  to  the  anti-slavery 
cause  ;  what  he  did  to  clarify,  exalt,  and  make  possible  the 
views  that  afterwards  became  acceptable  and  potent, —  the 
world  knows,  and  abolitionists  concede.  But  he  never  would 
or  could  join  any  organization  that  compromised  his  least 
conviction,  or  controlled  his  own  sense  of  a  Divine  policy. 
He  spoke  for  himself  ;  he  stood  for  himself.  He  had  neither 
the  concurrence  of  the  conservatives  nor  the  radicals.  He 
offended  the  abolitionists ;  he  disgusted  the  W^higs  ;  he 
pleased  only  God  and  his  own  conscience,  and  served  the 
great  cause  of  freedom  with  transcendent  power,  because  his 
devotion  to  it  was  neither  fanatical,  partial,  nor  local ;  and 
what  he  wrote  on  anti-slavery  is  true  for  all  time.     His  anti- 


CELEBRATION    AT    NEWPORT.  55 

slavery  was  a  logical  and  moral  consequent  of  his  reverence 
for  human  nature. 

Channing's  course  in  regard  to  the  trial  of  Abner  Knee- 
land  for  atheism  was  an  equal  illustration  of  his  faith  in  the 
self-protecting  power  of  the  truth,  and  the  safety  of  freedom 
of  opinion  and  expression.  It  required  immense  moral 
courage  to  head  the  petition  which  he  also  wrote  for  his 
release  from  prison  and  punishment.  But  in  the  commu- 
nity, in  all  the  world,  where  public  opinion  is  most  worth 
attending  to,  because  rarely  impulsive  or  extravagant,  Chan- 
ning  had,  many  times  in  his  life,  to  confront  it  with  protests 
or  resistance,  which  left  him  open  to  all  sorts  of  suspicion  in 
the  very  places  where  his  reputation  was  most  valuable, —  his 
piety,  his  faith,  and  his  scrupulosity.  He  kept  the  company 
of  publicans  and  sinners;  like  his  Master,  he  could  not  judge 
those  universally  condemned.  His  moral  courage  —  because 
it  had  no  conceit,  no  superficial  passion,  no  partisan  fire  in 
it  —  was  truly  sublime.  His  only  cowardice  was  the  rare 
and  honorable  fear  of  being  left  alone  with  an  accusing 
conscience. 

And  here,  to  draw  these  dim  outlines  of  Channing's  views 
and  character  to  a  period,  let  me  crown  all  by  saying  that 
self-reverence  was,  after  all,  his  most  characteristic  and  his 
central  grace  and  quality.  No  praise,  no  sympathy,  no  con- 
currence was  essential  to  his  peace  ;  but  the  approval  of  his 
own  soul  he  must  have  at  all  hazards  and  at  every  sacrifice. 
He  guarded  himself  at  every  door  from  what  might  betray 
his  purity  of  motive,  his  rectitude  of  will,  his  moral  freedom. 
To  be  and  not  to  seem  ;  to  be  himself  what  he  demanded 
and  urged  others  to  become;  to  be  just,  charitable,  hopeful, 
submissive  ;  to  be  like  Jesus,  and  like  what  he  believed  God 
to  be,  in  spirit  and  in  truth, —  this  was  the  never-failing  pur- 
pose and  plan  of  his  life.  Nothing  could  he  do  that  compro- 
mised this  holy  necessity  of  being  true  to  God  and  himself. 


56  CHANNINC    CENTENARY. 

\W  c»)uld  not  i;'<)  one  step  over  the  limits  his  fastidious 
purity  prescribed,  nor  one  step  back  from  the  path  where 
his  conscience  beckoned  him  on,  to  disaffront  his  best 
friends  or  to  disabuse  his  most  powerful  censors.  And  with 
all  his  publicity,  and  his  wide  sphere  of  fame  and  influence, 
he  lived  with  God  almost  as  in  the  seclusion  of  a  hermit's 
cell  :  as  free  from  worldly  ambition  as  if  he  were  the  lowliest 
of  his  kind  ;  as  womanly  in  his  purity  as  if  not  the  most 
manly  of  men  ;  as  childlike  as  if  he  had  not  the  experience, 
the  wisdom,  the  strength  of  the  ripest  maturity,  and  the 
duties  and  opportunities  of  a  statesman,  a  great  citizen,  a 
leader  of  his  time,  and  the  foremost  in  the  ranks  of  liberal 
spirits. 

I  have  not  attempted  a  biography  of  Channing,  nor  fol- 
lowed his  life  in  detail,  nor  quoted  his  words.  No  later 
work  of  that  sort  can  supersede  the  precious  autobiography 
which  his  nephew  has  .skilfully  extracted  from  his  journals, 
letters,  and  sermons.  It  is  too  serious,  too  spiritual,  too 
much  in  essence  and  too  little  in  detail,  too  bulky  and  yel 
too  monotonous,  to  be  easy  or  popular  reading,  though  a 
dozen  American  and  perhaps  as  many  English  editions  of  it 
have  been  circulated.  But  it  is  immortal  in  its  substance, 
and  can  never  cease  to  be  new  and  fresh  in  its  influence,  as 
human  souls  rise  to  the  level  where  its  sublime  simplicity 
and  searching  spirituality  become  visible.  It  is  a  work  to 
be  put  upon  the  shelf  or  table  of  the  private  closet,  in  the 
small  class  of  permanent  devotional  helps,  into  no  page  of 
which  can  any  docile  heart  dip  without  finding  a  baptism  of 
the  Holy  Spirit.  Would  it  were  read  and  studied  more !  I 
can  name  no  work  which  ministers  of  religion,  and  especially 
our  own,  could  consult  and  feed  upon  with  more  profit  to 
their  souls  and  the  souls  of  those  they  teach.  It  is  encourag- 
ing to  know  that  Channing's  works  and  his  memoir  have,  if 
not  the  immense  circulation   they  merit,  a  wide,  a  constant. 


CELEBRATION    AT    NEWPORT.  57 

an  increasing  currency  among  all  sects,  and  especially  among 
the  ministers  of  all  sects  ;  that  they  are  translated  into  the 
chief  tongues  of  the  world,  and  are  revered  and  honored  by 
all  who  are  capable  of  appreciating  their  calm,  deep,  un- 
partisan,  permanent,  and  changeless  truth  and  piety. 

I  should  not  have  presumed,  however,  to  make  this  dis- 
course so  long  and  full,  had  I  not  a  painful  feeling  that 
Channing,  after  all  the  exaltation  connected  with  his  name 
and  the  settled  canonization  of  his  character,  is  really,  to 
a  marked  degree,  neglected  and  unread  and  unappreciated 
among  those  who  owe  him  most,  and  who  should  be  best 
acquainted  with  his  writings,  his  views,  and  his  character- 
istics. I  often  hear  men,  who  owe  no  small  part  of  their 
own  liberty  and  spiritual  life  to  his  inspiration,  say  they  do 
not,  nay,  cannot  read  him  ;  and  then  I  feel  somewhat  the 
same  regret  and  surprise  with  which  I  hear  others  say  they 
cannot  enjoy  the  Bible.  I  confess  that  Channing  saturated 
his  more  docile  hearers  and  disciples,  in  his  lifetime,  with 
his  views  and  his  temper,  and  that  some  of  them  have  that 
surcharged  filiality,  which  sometimes  makes  children  find 
the  best  fathers  less  stimulating  society  than  much  less 
able  and  worthy  men,  not  so  familiar  and  congenital.  But 
I  am  confident  that  this  influence  has  at  length  become  a 
forgetfulness  and  an  ignorance  of  the  man  and  his  opinions, 
and  has  passed  over  from  those  who  once  knew  him  well, 
and  have  neglected  the  care  of  his  memory,  to  a  generation 
that  did  not  know  him,  and  do  not  seem  to  care  to  know 
him,  since  those  who  did  seem  so  lukewarm,  or  so  careless, 
to  preserve  his  present  fame  and  influence.  If  I  do  not,  in 
the  strength  of  my  reverence  and  gratitude,  overstate  this 
neglect,  it  is  a  deplorable  one.  For  nothing  can  be  less 
true  than  any  notion  that  Channing  was  overrated  by  his 
immediate  contemporaries,  his  fellow-ministers,  his  towns- 
men, or  his  disciples.     The  reverse  of   this   is   nearer  the 


58  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

tiulh.  Nor  is  he  duly  estimated,  great  as  his  fame  is  to- 
day. His  is  still  the  morning-star,  and  is  climbini;  the  sky. 
He  has  not  been  outshone  ;  he  has  not  been  superseded. 
No  great  spiritual  light,  of  a  strictly  human  kind,  ever  had 
greater,  denser  fogs  of  prejudice  to  encounter,  or  could 
oppose  to  them  a  milder  flame.  Still,  his  star  is  one  held 
baleful  by  millions  of  good  Christians.  His  light  waits  a 
purer  air,  a  clearer  and  more  rational  sky,  a  freer  humanity, 
to  show  its  full  glory.  But  it  is  steady,  and  its  oil  does  not 
fail,  nor  its  beams  flicker.  Long  after  names  more  popular 
and  commanding  have  faded  out  of  human  memory,  his 
name  will  be  reviving  with  new  splendor.  There  is  in  him 
and  his  works  little  to  decay,  little  to  correct  or  change ;  and 
there  is  nothing  to  excuse  or  to  explain  away.  His  lan- 
guage has  no  false  rhetoric,  no  pretence,  no  tiresome  tricks 
or  shallow  music.  He  was  an  artist,  but  one  who  never  left 
the  mark  of  his  tools  on  his  work.  Perhaps  he  fed  the  mid- 
night lamp  with  oil,  but  it  never  spilt  upon  his  page  or 
scented  his  ink.  He  touched  nothing  trivial,  local,  or  pass- 
ing ;  his  themes  are  always  great,  his  treatment  always 
majestic.  He  has  not  mixed  the  temporary  and  the  per- 
manent, feet  of  clay  with  thighs  of  brass  and  head  of  gold. 
He  is  always  high,  always  in  earnest,  always  careful,  clean, 
and  precise,  self-consistent,  and  full  of  reverence  for  truth, 
for  God,  for  man,  and  for  himself. 

Those  who  think  such  a  soul  and  such  a  thinker  and 
spiritual  force  can  pass  by,  can  be  repeated  and  improved 
upon,  superseded  and  displaced,  outgrown  and  out-shined, 
are  dull  observers  of  the  permanent  place  which  such  rare 
spirits  hold  in  the  uncrowded  meridian,  where  their  stars 
shine  together  forever.  Religious  genius  is  God's  rarest  in- 
spiration and  least  common  gift  in  any  transcendent  form. 
If  we  haunt  and  search  the  remotest  antiquity  to  find  and 
to  sit  at  the  feet  of  poets,  artists,  sages,  and  hang  our  fresh- 


CELEBRATION    AT    NEWPORT.  59 

est  wreaths  upon  the  spectral  brows  of  shades  whose  per- 
sonal history  is  unknown,  when  will  the  day  come  that  St. 
Augustine,  Borromeo,  a  Kempis,  Fenelon,  and  Guion,  Bos- 
suet,  Taylor,  and  Butler,  and  Channing  are  to  be  esteemed 
less  than  ever  fresh  fonts  of  Divine  inspiration  ?  Channing 
belongs  to  the  Church  Universal,  and  for  all  time.  But  he 
had  an  American  birthplace,  near  the  sea  that  unites  all, 
and  in  a  place  that  is  more  and  more  frequented  and  cosmo- 
politan. It  is  fit  that  on  this  spot  his  eternal  memory  should 
have  its  monument.  Catholic,  and  all  the  more  Catholic, 
because  Unitarian,  he  must  always  wear  the  unity  of  God, 
not  in  its  vulgar  sense,  but  in  its  spiritual  significance,  as 
the  central  jewel  in  his  coronet  of  shining  doctrines.  He 
suffered  for  his  testimony  to  this  concealed,  neglected,  or  per- 
verted "  Simplicity  of  Christ,"  and  his  disciples  and  fellow- 
Christians  would  be  ungrateful  to  forget  that  they  owe  him 
special  devotion,  and  the  devotion  of  publishing  and  pro- 
claiming him,  all  the  more  because  his  fidelity  to  them  cost 
him  dear,  and  took  him  out  of  the  general  ranks  of  Christen- 
dom to  be  their  conscript  soldier.  He  was  a  cosmopolite, 
but  he  was  none  the  less  a  thorough  American  ;  and  the 
genius  of  America  possessed  him,  —  the  hopefulness,  the 
progressiveness,  the  freshness,  the  courage  and  unconven- 
tionality  of  the  new  hemisphere.  He  belonged  in  a  new 
world,  a  democratic  State,  a  country  with  an  ample  horizon. 
He  was  born  by  the  sea,  he  died  in  the  mountains.  He  was 
bred  in  the  country,  he  lived  in  the  city  ;  he  passed  away  in 
a  place  that  knew  him  not,  in  the  heart  of  the  most  Ameri- 
can of  American  States,  and  on  a  journey.  These  things 
are  typical.  He  belonged  in  no  one  place  ;  and  his  spirit 
and  influence  are  national,  and  still  on  a  journey.  The  sea 
and  the  mountains  claim  him.  Places  he  knew  not  have  a 
sacred  interest  in  his  history.  I  believe  the  nation  will 
some  day,  remembering  his  physical  birth  in  Rhode  Island, 


60  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

his  spiritual  birth  in  \'ir^inia,  his  life-work  in  Massachusetts, 
his  death  in  Vermont,  his  rehitions  to  the  most  sig'nihcant 
reformation  and  revolution  in  reliji^ious  life,  because  a  thor- 
ough reversal  of  base  in  the  whole  order  of  theology,  place 
his  monument  in  the  Capitol,  as  the  only  place  central 
enough  to  express  his  national  significance.  But  it  will  not 
be  until  his  name  and  place  as  the  greatest  of  American 
prophets  is  fully  recognized.  And  that  will  come  when  the 
candid  study  of  his  works  and  his  life  shall  show,  with  uni- 
versal consent,  that,  although  a  generation  or  two  in  advance 
of  his  time,  he  proclaimed  and  illustrated  the  kind  of  relig- 
ion, the  form  of  Christianity,  which  is  alone  adapted  to  a 
universal  spread,  and  destined  to  become  a  universal  leaven 
and  the  true  Bread  of  Life  to  the  American  people ;  and  that 
what  is  permanently  their  faith  is  sure  at  last  to  be  the  faith 
of  the  whole  world.  So  high,  so  wide,  so  deep  is  the  claim 
of  William  Ellery  Channing, 

After  the  Rev.  Nathaniel  Adams  had  pronounced  the  ben- 
ediction, the  audience  was  dismissed  ;  and,  by  invitation  of 
the  committee  on  hospitality  of  the  Newport  parish,  the  vis- 
itors from  out  of  town  went  to  the  Aquidneck  House,  where 
a  bountiful  collation  was  served. 

THE  OOENEK-STONE  CEREMONIES. 

The  hour  for  the  ceremonies  of  laying  the  corner-stone  of 
the  Memorial  Church  quickly  came,  and  found  a  crowd  of 
from  fifteen  hundred  to  two  thousand  persons,  who  had 
gathered  to  see  what  might  be  seen,  shivering  beneath  the 
clouded  sky  in  the  chilling  wind  that  whistled  through  the 
leafless  trees.  The  inspiration  was  in  the  occasion,  and  not 
in  the  surroundings.  There  was  no  disposition  either  on 
the  part  of  the  spectators  or  of  the  participants  to  prolong 
the  exercises  here. 


CELEBRATION    AT    NEWPORT.  6 1 

The  services  were  conducted  by  Rev.  Mr.  Schermerhorn, 
pastor  of  the  church.  He  first  introduced  Rev.  John  C. 
Kimball,  of  Hartford,  a  former  pastor  of  the  Unitarian 
church,  who  offered  prayer.  Mr.  Schermerhorn  then  made 
the  pleasing  announcement  that  the  minimum  amount  for 
the  expense  of  building  the  church,  J§ 50,000,  had  been  fully 
subscribed,  a  telegram  just  received  from  the  Rev.  Dr.  Put- 
nam, of  Brooklyn,  making  up  the  sum  to  that  desirable 
figure.  The  church  could  thus  be  proceeded  with  imme- 
diately, and  begin  its  career  with  no  debt  to  hamper  it. 
Mr.  Schermerhorn  then  read  the  contents  of  the  sealed 
box  placed  within  the  corner-stone.  The  articles  were  the 
following :  Dr.  Bellows'  memorial  address ;  Rev.  C.  T. 
Brooks'  poem ;  a  programme  of  the  day's  services  ;  an  ac- 
count of  the  first  meeting  of  the  Unitarian  Society  of  New- 
port, in  1835  ;  a  full  list  of  the  forty  original  corporators  of 
the  church  ;  the  Christian  Register  of  April  3,  the  Newport 
Mercury  of  March  13,  March  27,  and  April  3,  the  Newport 
News  of  April  6,  and  the  Newport  Journal  of  April  3  ;  the 
list  of  the  contributors  to  the  memorial  fund,  five  hundred 
and  sixty-eight  in  number ;  a  set  of  ancient  coins  left  by  one 
of  the  incorporators  who  died  a  few  months  since,  making 
the  request  that  the  coins  be  put  in  the  corner-stone  with  his 
name;  a  new  silver  dollar  of  year  1880,  presented  by  Jos.  J. 
Read ;  the  Hartford  Times,  containing  a  sermon  by  Rev. 
John  C.  Kimball;  a  copy  of  the  Bible,  presented  by  John 
T.  Bush ;  a  copy  of  the  "  Reminiscences  of  Channing,"  by 
Miss  E.  P.  Peabody ;  a  copy  of  the  Unitarian  Review  for 
April,  1880;  and  the  Providence  yijz^r;?^/ of  April  7.  When 
the  box  had  been  placed  in  the  stone,  Mr.  W.  F.  Channing, 
of  Providence,  a  son  of  the  great  divine,  lovingly  laid  a 
bunch  of  roses  on  the  top.  The  Rev.  W.  H.  Channing,  of 
London,  a  nephew  of  Dr.  Channing,  with  uplifted  eyes  and 
standing   upon   the   corner-stone,   said,    "  I    pronounce   this 


62  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

corner-stone,  hrnily  and  squarely  laid,  placed  on  the  rock  of 
ages,  Christ  Jesus,  in  the  full  fellowship  of  the  Son  and  in 
the  blessing  of  God."  The  benediction  was  pronounced  by 
the  Rev.  R.  R.  Shippen,  Secretary  of  the  American  Unita- 
rian Association. 


The  poem  written  by  the  Rev.  C.  T.  Brooks  and  the  Rev. 

William  H.  Channing's  address,  which,  if  the  day  had  been 

warm  and  pleasant,  would  have  been  delivered  at  the  site  of 

the  church,  were  delivered  in  the  opera  house,  where  a  large 

audience  assembled  at  about  half-past  three.     After  singing 

by  the  choir,  Mr.  Brooks  read  the  following  note  from  the 

Rev.  George  Gibbs  Channing,  the  only  surviving  brother  of 

Dr.  Channing :  — 

Milton,  Mass.,  April  7,  1880. 

I  long  to  be  in  Newport  on  this  sacred  anniversary,  but  my  great  age 
of  ninety  years  prevents  me  from  being  present  in  the  body. 

I  send  to  the  survivors  of  my  early  friends  and  fellow-townsmen,  and 
to  their  children,  my  heartfelt  benedictions. 

George  Gibbs  Channing. 

Mr.  Brooks  then  proceeded  to  read  the  following  ode,  writ- 
ten by  him  for  the  occasion  :  — 

ODE  AT  THE  LAYING  OF  THE  CORNER-STONE  OF  THE 
MEMORIAL  CHURCH. 

Auspicious  day  ! 
What  throngs  from  far  and  near, 
With  grateful  heart,  on  Memory's  altar  here. 

Love's  offering  lay ! 

Thy  voiceful  morn 
Calls  back  long-vanished  days, 
And  opens  to  the  soul's  prophetic  gaze 

Ages  unborn. 

This  day  shall  be. 
While  years  and  ages  run, 
And  Truth's  bright  torch  is  passed  from  sire  to  son, 

A  way-mark  of  the  free. 


CELEBRATION    AT    NEWPORT.  63 

A  hundred  years, 
By  thought  evoked,  return  ; 
And  the  long-buried  past,  from  Memory's  urn, 

Transfigured,  reappears. 

With  reverent  feet. 
We  climb  the  historic  hill. 
All  else  how  changed!  — yet  earth,  sky,  ocean,  still 

Our  vision  greet. 

In  these  fair  skies. 
Illumined  by  a  spirit's  glow. 
The  forms  of  them  whose  relics  sleep  below 

In  glory  rise. 

On  this  green  slope. 
They,  musing,  stood,  and  to  the  skies. 
In  many  a  holy  hour,  upraised  their  eyes 

In  yearning  hope. 

On  this  fair  hill, 
"  P'or  Christ  and  Peace  "  they  built  in  faith  sublime 
In  Christ  and  Peace,  far  from  the  storms  of  time. 

Their  souls  live  still. 

In  heaven's  pure  height, 
Those  noble  men, —  the  reverent,  brave,  and  free, — 
Still  young  for  Virtue,  Truth,  and  Liberty, 

Walk  in  God's  light. 

Pure  as  the  sky. 
Unfettered  as  the  wind  and  wave, 
They  live  in  Him  to  whom  their  lives  they  gave, — 

Their  King  on  high. 

Amid  that  band. 
One  form,  with  meek  yet  manly  mien, 
I  see,  majestic  and  serene, 

In  saintly  beauty  stand. 

To  heaven's  broad  light. 
His  infant  vision  opened  here. 
And  with  a  deeper  rapture,  year  by  year. 

He  hailed  the  radiant  sight. 

His  eye  could  see, 
In  earth's  and  heaven's  expanse. 
His  heart  could  ftel,  in  Nature's  kindling  glance. 

The  Father  of  the  free. 


64  ClIAXNING    CKNTENARY. 

How  (litl  his  heart  rejoice, 
"  In  solitude,  when  man  is  least  alone," 
To  feel  Christ's  word  attuned  to  unison 

With  Nature's  voice ! 

Henceforth,  his  thought 
No  chain  of  sect  or  school  could  bar  or  bind  ; 
Belittling  creeds,  before  his  free-born  mind, 

Shrank  into  naught. 

His  God  was  Love  ; 
His  creed,  the  Master's  footsteps  to  pursue  ; 
His  the  warm  heart, —  the  clear-eyed  vision,  too, — 

John's  eagle  and  Christ's  dove. 

So  lived  and  taught 
The  sainted  man, —  the  upright,  true,  and  free, — 
Whom  we  to-day  remember  tenderly 

With  reverent  thought. 

And  in  the  Trust 
In  which  he  lived  and  died  — 
In  which  for  evermore  abide 

The  spirits  of  the  just  — 

And  to  the  Truth 
For  which  he  lived  and  wrought. 
And  whence  his  heavenward-yearning  spirit  caught 
.     The  quenchless  fire  of  youth. 

This  corner-stone. 
In  Faith,  Hope,  Love,  we  lay, 
And  for  Christ's  peace  and  God's  pure  blessing  pray 

To  rest  thereon. 

Rise,  hallowed  walls  I 
Look  forth  o'er  land  and  sea, 
And  welcome  all  to  Peace  and  Liberty 

Whom  Christ's  free  spirit  calls  I 

From  thy  rock-base, 
Laid  by  Almighty  Power, 
Lift  high  thy  well-knit  frame,  majestic  tower, 

In  strength  and  grace ! 

While  on  thy  spire 
The  morning  sunbeams  play. 
And  linger  there  the  smiles  of  dying  day 

With  cheerful  fire, 


CELEBRATION    AT    NEWPORT.  65 

Men's  thoughts  shall  climb, 
As  by  a  heavenward-pointing  finger  led, 
To  that  bright  realm  where  dwell  the  immortal  dead 

In  peace  sublime. 

There  'mid  the  band 
Of  blessed  ones  who  have,  through  death,  gone  in 
To  the  Lord's  joy,  made  strong  by  Him  to  win 

The  immortal  land, 

C  banning  shines  now 
In  glory  far  above  all  earthly  fame, 
With  that  ineffable  and  holy  Name 

Writ  on  his  brow  : 

That  name  which  none 
Can  read  but  they  who,  through  the  holy  strife 
Of  truth  and  patient  faith,  a  place  have  won 

In  the  Lamb's  Book  of  Life. 

The  reading  of  the  ode  was  followed  immediately  by  an 
ADDKESS  BY  REV,  WILLIAM  H,  CHANNING. 

This  morning,  amid  the  sunrise  brightening  to  full  noon, 
in  the  presence  of  the  all-good,  all-true,  all-beautiful,  all- 
blessed,  all-beneficent,  all-perfect  Father,  we  beheld  to- 
gether the  light  of  life  which  irradiated  Channing,  as  mir- 
rored back  in  crystal  splendor  from  our  dear,  beloved  friend, 
Henry  W.  Bellows.  And  now  this  afternoon,  amid  his 
townsfolk  and  his  fellow-countrymen,  amid  Christians  of 
the  same  communion  and  of  all  communions  in  the  Church 
Universal,  amid  a  great  cloud  of  witnesses  unseen  to  us, 
we  have  laid  the  corner-stone  of  the  temple  that  is  to  be. 
I  stand  here  to  render  back  a  grateful  tribute,  in  the  name 
of  the  family  whose  head  the  illustrious  Channing  was  in 
his  generation,  commissioned  by  my  venerable  uncle  to 
speak  for  him  and  them,  as  the  son  of  the  eldest  son.  And 
now,  dear  fellow-children  in  the  great  family  of  God,  allow 
me  to  lay  before  you  what  is  the  significance  of  the  corner- 
stones of  this  temple.  The  classic  ancients  were  wont, 
5 


66  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

when    they    would  sketch   the   rerfect  Life,  to    speak   of   a 
"  Four-square    Man,"   meanin<;-    thereby  a  person    in    whose 
character   and    life    the    four   cardinal    virtues    of    Temper- 
ance, Fortitude,  Wisdom,  and    Justice  were   duly  balanced. 
And  the  Christian    Fathers  reared  upon  these  foundations 
the  four    theological  virtues    of  Faith,   Hope,   Charity,  and 
Holiness.     Let  us,  too,  plant  on  the  rock  of  Eternal  Right 
our  Four    Corner-stones,   and    upbuild    our    Four  Walls    of 
Channing's  Living  Temple.     There  are  four  corner-stones. 
Let  me  name  them.     The   name  of  the  first  is  Confidence 
in  the  infinite  love   of  the   heavenly  Father.     If  there  was 
one    grand    central    reality    of    which    Channing   was    the 
prophet    and    the    representative,  it    is    this    assurance   that 
the  Giver  of  all  Good  is  the  Father  of  all  spirits  throughout 
the  universe    of   spirits.     It  was  in  the    confidence    of  this 
inner  relationship  with  the   Father  that   he  looked  without 
a  cloud  of  fear  into  the  sunlit  presence  of  the  Father's  face, 
assured  that  all  the  love  of  all  earthly  parents  combined  is 
dim,  cold,  lifeless,  in  contrast  with  the  infinite  love  of  the 
Father  of   all.     It  was  in    this    spirit  Channing   lived,  and 
shed  abroad  the  lustre  of  the  Father's  love.     The  second 
stone  is  Filial  Love,  and  stands  for  the  name  of  the  beloved 
Son   of  God.     If  you  would  see   the   secret  of  Channing's 
power,  find  it  there.     From  first  to  last,  he  placed  his  hand 
in  the  hand  of  the  beloved  Brother,  of  the  Friend  of  friends, 
of  that  glorified  and  transfigured  son  of  man  made  Son  of 
God.     He  recognized  as   coming  from   an  immortal  centre 
this  life  of  God  in  Christ,  which  made  Jesus  not  an  excep- 
tion to  the  race,  but  the  very  type  of  the  race.     The  third 
corner-stone,  as   the  completion  of  these  two,  is  the  grand 
Family  of  the  Children  of  God.     Channing  taught  not  only 
that  man  upon  this  earth  is  one,  but    that    the    race   here 
below  is  one  with  the  race  above,  with  the  Father  over  all. 
You  have  not  read  aright  his  doctrine,  unless  you  see  that 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  6^ 

he  had  such  a  consciousness  of  the  all-pervading  and  all- 
inspiring  love  of  the  Father,  that  he  believed  the  progress 
and  advance  of  angels  in  the  highest  hierarchy  are  felt  by 
the  youngest  child  on  earth.  He  interprets  by  that  the 
rights  of  the  slave,  he  comes  down  from  his  place  of  privi- 
lege and  power  to  speak  his  grandest  words  to  the  child  of 
the  hard-working  mechanic.  The  fourth  corner-stone  is  the 
Beautiful  Beneficence  which  unites  the  reconciled  race  of 
man  universal  around  our  globe  in  the  free-will  co-opera- 
tion of  mutual  service  and  interfluent  good-will  and  joy. 

Here  are  the  four  corner-stones.  Now  on  them  let  us 
rear  the  four  walls  of  this  temple,  corresponding  to  these 
corner-stones.  And  the  first  wall,  corresponding  to  the  love 
of  the  Father,  is  harmonious  Equity  of  well-ordered  rela- 
tions according  to  God's  law  throughout  the  universe. 
There  is  the  first  fair  wall  of  the  temple.  And,  next,  let  me 
ask  you  to  look  at  the  second  wall  of  this  temple,  which 
corresponds  to  the  second  corner-stone,  the  love  of  the  child 
for  the  parent.  And  the  name  of  that  wall  is  Brotherly 
Kindness,-  recognizing  as  of  kith  and  kin  every  single 
human  being.  And  then  the  third  wall,  which  corresponds 
to  the  family  on  earth  and  the  family  in  heaven,  is  Hu- 
manity, made  one  in  organized  society.  How  little  justice 
has  been  done  to  the  statesmanship  of  Channing !  He  be- 
lieved in  the  words  lisped  in  the  simple  childish  prayer, 
"That  thy  will  may  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  done  in 
heaven."  He  believed  in  the  possibility,  he  believed  in  the 
certainty,  of  a  new  era  of  heavenly  humanity.  No  young 
man  whom  I  have  ever  known  was  so  enthusiastic  in  his 
ideal,  so  poetic  in  his  imagination,  so  filled  full  with  the 
courage  of  an  immortal  and  universal  hope  as  was  William 
Ellery  Channing.  Year  by  year  of  his  progress,  he  was 
growing  deeper,  higher,  firmer,  broader.  The  fourth  wall  is 
just  the  name  that  was  given  to  the  last  volume  of  sermons 


68  CHANMNG    CENTENARY. 

published  from  his  manuscripts.  It  is  the  Perfect  Life.  If 
you  ever  read  his  early  writings,  if  you  ever  study  what  was 
his  aim  from  the  time  he  entered  into  the  ministry,  you  will 
find  that,  as  far  back  as  the  very  first  sermon  he  preached, 
he  says  that  Love  is  the  law  of  universal  order,  and  that  the 
end  for  man  in  life  is  perfect  harmony  by  perfect  love. 
And,  from  that  time  forward,  it  was  his  end,  his  aim,  his 
thirst,  his  aspiration.  Dr.  Channing  believed  in  a  perfect 
life  for  you  and  nie.  With  the  saints  of  all  ages,  he  sought 
to  know  the  length  and  breadth,  and  depth  and  height,  of 
that  love  of  God  in  Christ,  which  passeth  knowledge,  that 
he  might  be  filled  with  the  fulness  of  God.  And  this  Per- 
fect Life  was  the  P"ourth  Wall  of  his  temple. 

We  have  laid  the  corner-stones  and  reared  the  walls,  and 
now  come  ye  and  enter  in.  And  there,  in  the  front  of  that 
impartial  equity  of  God's  own  righteousness,  is  the  lowly 
porch  of  humility.  Of  all  human  beings  whom  I  have  ever 
known, —  and  God  has  been  rich  to  me  in  bounties  in  bring- 
ing me  into  union  with  many  angels  in  the  flesh, —  I  have 
never  seen  Channing's  peer  in  simplicity  and  humility.  The 
portal  through  which  Channing  entered  into  the  inner  pres- 
ence of  the  P"ather  was  this  lowly  porch  through  which  we 
must  all  enter.  P'rom  the  time  I  first  knew  him  as  a  little 
child, —  and  I  crept  among  his  books  when  I  was  an  infant, 
—  onward  to  the  last  hour  when  he  spoke  into  my  ear  his 
closing  words,  "  I  have  received  many  messages  from  the 
Spirit,"  —  never  once  in  all  those  years  did  I  ever  see  an  act, 
did  I  ever  hear  a  word,  did  I  ever  behold  a  look,  that  was 
not  according  to  his  ideal  of  the  perfect  life.  When  I  came 
to  study  his  manuscripts,  tear-stained  and  soiled,  I  found  his 
own  confessions  before  his  P""ather  of  his  shortcoming.  I 
call  upon  all  who  witnessed  his  daily  life  in  the  exquisite 
sweetness  of  his  home  and  in  every  relationship  of  duty  in 
which   he  stood  to  the   country,  was  he  not  faultless,  spot- 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  69 

less,  peerless  ?  I  have  known  many  grand  spirits  in  my 
own  land  and  abroad ;  but  here  I  say  it,  as  before  the 
angels,  never  yet  upon  the  earth  have  I  met  the  peer  of 
William  Ellery  Channing.  He  was  humility  itself.  Yet 
how  grand  was  his  dignity !  Only  through  his  own  confes- 
sions in  his  own  private  manuscripts  am  I  conscious  that  he 
ever  was  touched  with  sin  and  knew  struggle  and  warfare 
with  evil.  The  pavement  of  his  temple  is  the  co-ordinated 
strength  of  mutual  help  in  all  the  lowliest  services  of  life. 
He  comprehended  what  is  the  blending  of  majesty  and 
mercy,  and  carried  out  in  every  hour  of  every  day  the  law 
of  the  Master  :  he  is  greatest  who  is  most  the  servant  of  all. 
At  the  end  of  the  temple  are  the  altars,  and  they  are 
three  in  number.  The  first  is  purity,  the  second  is  self-sac- 
rifice, and  the  third  the  open  tomb,  the  up-springing  aspira- 
tion toward  God.  And  now  let  us  crown  the  temple  with 
the  dome,  the  dome  of  perennial  inspiration,  the  dome  of 
the  inflowing  holiness  of  God,  the  dome  of  the  Father 
coming  down  to  dwell  in  the  tabernacle  of  the  family  of  the 
children  of  God  on  earth,  made  one  with  the  children  of 
God  in  heaven.  We  have  laid  our  corner-stone,  we  have 
reared  our  walls,  we  have  pictured  the  altars,  we  have 
spanned  the  dome.  Dear  brethren,  dear  sisters,  in  the 
name  of  my  beloved  uncle,  accept  his  benediction,  his  God- 
speed, and  good  cheer.  Farewell,  dear  fellow-mortals  on 
earth,  dear  fellow-immortals  in  Christ : — 

"  Build  thee  more  stately  mansions,  O  my  soul, 
As  the  swift  seasons  roll. 
Leave  thy  low-vaulted  past : 
Let  each  new  temple,  nobler  than  the  last. 
Lift  thee  toward  heaven  with  a  dome  more  vast ; 
Till  thou  at  length  art  free. 
Leaving  thine  out-grown  shell  by  life's  unresting  sea." 

The    afternoon    exercises    closed  with    singing   and   the 
benediction,  pronounced  by  Rev.    Dr.   Hosmer,  of  Newton. 


/O  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Many  of  the  visitors  from   out   of  town  returned   home  by 
the  afternoon  trains ;  but  their  departure  produced  no  visi-  • 
ble  effect  upon  the  attendance  at 

THE   EVENING   MEETING, 

also  held  at  the  Opera  House,  which  was  crowded  by  an 
audience  principally  made  up  of  citizens  of  Newport,  many 
of  whom  had  been  unable  to  attend  the  morning  and  after- 
noon meetings.  Governor  Van  Zandt  presided,  and  was 
surrounded  on  the  platform  by  many  men  and  women  of 
distinction.  After  devotional  exercises,  conducted  by  Revs. 
Charles  A.  Humphreys  and  R.  R.  Shippen,  Mr.  Littlefield, 
whose  rich  solos  were  a  feature  of  the  whole  proceedings, 
sang  again  the  hymn  "Nearer,  my  God,  to  Thee."  Mr. 
Schermerhorn  then  announced  the  receipt  of  letters  from 
many  distinguished  persons.  Time  would  suffice  only  for 
the  reading  of  a  few.  Those  selected  and  read  were  sent 
by  the  late  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  John  G.  Whittier, 
Henry  W.  Longfellow,  E.  G.  Robinson,  President  of  Brown 
University,  Bishop  Clark,  of  Rhode  Island,  Bishop  Hunt- 
ington, of  Syracuse,  N.Y.,  George  W.  Curtis,  editor  of 
Harper  s  Weekly,  Mrs.  Mary  Livermore,  Rev.  Phillips 
Brooks,  Prof.  Roswell  D.  Hitchcock,  of  the  Union  Theo- 
logical Seminary,  New  York,  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson, 
Dean  Stanley,  and  James  Martineau.  Among  the  letters 
received  and  not  read  were  those  from  Dr.  C.  A.  Bartol, 
Henry  P.  Kidder,  Rev.  Dr.  J.  W.  Thompson,  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes,  of  Boston,  Charles  W.  Eliot,  President  of  Harvard 
College,  Rev.  Thomas  Hill,  ex-President  of  Harvard,  Dr. 
A.  P.  Peabody,  and  Dr.  F.  H.  Hedge,  also  of  Harvard 
College,  Rev.  Dr.  W.  H.  Furness,  of  Philadelphia,  and  Prof. 
J.  L.  Diman,  of  Brown  University. 

We  give  here  in  full  the  letters  of  Dr.  Martineau,  Bishop 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  ^1 

Huntington,    Bishop    Clark,    John    G.    Whittier,   Rev.    Dr. 
Hitchcock,  and  William  Lloyd  Garrison  :  — 

From    JAMES    MARTINEAU. 

5  Gordon  Street,  London,  W.C,  March  20,  1880. 

My  dear  Mr.  Schermerkorn, —  If  Rhode  Island  were  only  as  many 
miles  away  as  it  is  degrees  of  longitude,  I  should  assuredly  ask  permis- 
sion to  join  the  Newport  commemoration  on  the  7th  of  April.  It  would 
be  a  pure  joy  to  me  to  unite  in  the  chorus  of  grateful  reverence  wliich 
will  there  and  then  harmonize  all  spirits.  Happily,  the  feeling  which 
creates  this  celebration  transcends  all  local  limits,  and  will  find  voice  for 
itself  here  as  well  as  in  Channing's  land ;  so  that,  in  thinking  of  your 
festival  of  thanksgiving,  we  shall  feel,  not  as  exiles  from  you,  but  as 
brethren  stirred  by  the  same  affection  and  bending  in  the  same  homage. 
You  ask  me  for  a  word  of  testimony  to  the  influence  of  Channing's  life 
and  writings.  You  could  appeal  to  no  more  willing  witness.  I  can 
never  forget  my  first  introduction  to  his  name.  I  was  a  school-boy  of 
sixteen  when,  in  1821,  my  master,  the  late  Dr.  Lant  Carpenter,  received 
from  Boston  a  copy  of  the  Dudleian  Lectures  on  the  Evidences  of 
Christianity,  and  both  read  it  to  his  pupils  in  private,  and,  after  a 
preface  of  enthusiastic  commendation,  preached  it  to  his  congregation 
on  the  following  Sunday.  It  laid  a  powerful  hold  on  me,  and  seemed  to 
find  something  in  me  that  had  never  been  reached  before.  This  was 
but  the  beginning  of  an  experience  which  was  repeated  and  enlarged  as, 
one  after  another,  his  great  sermons  and  essays  came  over  and  burned 
their  way  into  new  seats  of  thought  and  affection.  Nor  was  the  impres- 
sion due  to  my  temporary  susceptibility  of  youthful  zeal.  On  the  con- 
trary, when  his  later  writings  defined  his  attitude  toward  the  great  social, 
moral,  and  constitutional  questions  of  the  time, —  slavery,  freedom  of 
discussion,  of  association,  war,  temperance,  sect,  organization,— they 
appeared  to  me  so  strong  in  their  justice,  so  calm  in  their  wisdom,  so 
considerate  in  their  charity,  as  to  lift  him  above  the  whole  region  of 
prejudice,  passion,  and  fear,  and  to  express  not  less  the  statesman's 
mind  than  the  prophet's  soul.  And  so,  till  he  was  taken  home  in  1842, 
my  heart  followed  him  with  ever-deepening  veneration,  and  recognized 
in  him  the  commanding  power  of  spiritual  religion  to  harmonize  the 
intensest  faculties  and  glorify  the  frailest  Hfe. 

But,  when  I  would  give  account  to  others  of  this  subduing  influence, 
it  seems  to  evade  all  words.  Like  every  form  of  living  beauty,  it  can 
be  seized  by  no  analysis ;  for  it  is  more  than  all  its  parts,  and,  lay  them 


72  CHANNING    CKNTENARV. 

out  as  you  will,  it  is  not  there.  In  truth,  Channing's  greatness  was  of 
a  kind  that  has  nothing  complex  in  it;  that,  instead  of  being  elaborated 
by  constant  additions,  is  rather  disengaged  by  freeing  its  first  element 
from  all  adhesions  that  hide  and  hinder  it.  Its  very  essence  lay  in  its 
simplicity;  and,  just  as  all  books  upon  the  character  of  Christ  do  but 
spoil  the  gospel  and  wipe  out  the  image  which  they  pretend  to  delineate, 
so  will  the  secret  of  Channing  be  better  known  from  any  page  of  his 
own  than  from  volumes  of  critical  appreciation.  One  thought,  possess- 
ing his  whole  nature  and  showing  to  him  the  whole  field  of  being,  con- 
stitutes the  focus  of  his  power ;  namely,  the  vision  of  moral  perfection 
as  the  reality  of  God,  the  possibility  for  man,  the  standard  of  right,  the 
acme  of  beauty,  the  end  of  society,  the  pledge  of  immortality,  the 
essence  and  the  blessedness  of  heaven.  Every  feeling  in  himself  that 
fell  short  of  this  he  rebuked  and  disciplined  with  profound  humility  and 
aspiration.  Every  traditional  doctrine  at  variance  with  this  he  relent- 
lessly cut  off,  and  gained  a  purified  theology.  Every  institution  that 
treated  this  with  insult  or  despair  he  indignantly  denounced,  and  so 
became  an  emancipator  of  the  body  and  the  soul,  a  champion  of  all 
spiritual  culture,  a  proclaimer  of  the  "  honor  due  to  all  men."  Every 
conception  of  human  greatness  and  glory  that  contradicted  this,  and 
made  an  idol  of  dazzling  ambition  and  unscrupulous  artifice  and  suc- 
cessful force,  he  exposed  as  a  blind  revolt  against  the  supremacy  of 
God.  This  light  of  righteousness  was  to  him  the  whole  inner  mean- 
ing of  the  universe,  bathing  the  heavens  in  eternal  splendor,  and  ever 
struggling  to  conquer  the  shadows  of  our  earthly  lot.  He  turned  it  as 
his  test  on  all  that  came  before  him  for  judgment.  Whatever  was 
congenial  with  it  no  disguise  could  withhold  from  his  love ;  and  all 
that  repelled  it  shrank  from  his  pure  and  piercing  look.  Christianity 
itself  had  its  authority  for  him  chiefly  from  the  same  source :  its  persua- 
sion lay  in  the  disinterestedness  and  holiness  of  Christ,  in  that  life  of 
filial  surrender,  of  gentlest  compassion,  of  unshrinking  sacrifice  which 
revealed  what  our  nature  would  be  under  the  transfiguring  power  of  a 
divine  faith.  This  identification  of  religion  with  goodness,  and  its  cog- 
nate truth  and  beauty,  is  the  real  source,  I  take  it,  of  Channing's  influ- 
ence on  his  age.  His  words  were  no  echoes  of  old  voices,  no  repeti- 
tions of  things  learned  by  rote :  they  made  no  circuits  through  texts 
and  creeds,  but  spoke  straight  to  the  living  though  sleeping  contents 
of  men's  conscience  and  affections,  asking  there  for  no  consent  which 
could  not  be  honestly  refused,  and  kindling  a  sympathy  which  it  was 
a  joy  to  yield.  He  rebuked  no  sin  but  that  which  already  disturbed  the 
heart's  true  rest ;  he  set  up  no  authority  which  was  not  inwardly  felt  ere 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  73 

it  was  outwardly  claimed ;  he  offered  no  salvation  that  dispensed  with 
the  free  exercise  of  spiritual  power,  in  surrender,  if  not  in  victory ;  he 
promised  the  earth  no  golden  age  of  which  the  elements  were  not  con- 
sciously stirring  in  the  human  soul,  and  the  dawn  already  climbing  the 
horizon  with  foregleams  of  the  perfect  day.  To  his  pleadings  and  ap- 
peals, every  one  has  within  him  an  irresistible  witness  and  response,  fur- 
nished not  by  any  temporary  mood  or  accidental  conviction,  but  by  the 
very  make  of  his  nature,  the  primary  self-knowledge  of  his  reason,  his 
affections,  and  his  will.  Hence,  it  is  that  his  writings  pass  from  lan- 
guage to  language,  and  in  the  transition  lose  nothing  essential  to  their 
power,  and,  though  special  and  occasional  in  their  origin,  are  not  hin- 
dered in  their  influence  from  becoming  universal. 

And  for  the  same  reason  he  speaks  with  a  persuasion  that  cannot 
easily  be  antiquated.  The  constancy  with  which,  in  every  argument,  he 
starts  from  first  principles  of  reason  and  right,  and  recurs  to  them  at 
each  completed  stage  of  his  advance,  elevates  his  biographical  estimates, 
his  historical  criticisms,  and  even  his  political  papers,  into  philosophical 
and  ethical  dignity,  and  will  retain  for  them  a  place  in  literature  when 
the  persons  and  the  crises  they  discuss  have  been  forgotten.  At  last, 
no  doubt,  as  the  past  recedes  from  view,  and  its  problems  vanish  before 
some  new  strife  of  thought,  and  the  tides  in  the  affairs  of  men  have 
altered  the  curves  and  shifted  the  landmarks  on  all  their  coasts,  it  will 
become  too  difficult  to  extract  the  permanent  from  the  transient  in  his 
page ;  and  he  must  share  the  general  fate  which  quenches  the  voices  of 
the  dead  in  the  acclaim  that  gathers  around  living  genius.  But  it  will 
not  be  so  till  the  truth  in  which  and  for  which  he  lived  has  passed  into 
many  another  soul  and  made  it  an  organ  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  And  so, 
even  if,  as  the  centuries  lapse,  he  should  be  heard  of  no  more,  his  words 
will  yet  not  be  made  void,  but  still  water  the  roots  of  future  good,  and 
accomplish  that  whereto  he  sent  it. 

That  your  commemoration  and  ours  may  so  quicken  his  Christ-like 
spirit  in  us  as  to  consecrate  us  anew  to  disinterested  service  in  the  love 
of  God  is  the  heartfelt  prayer  of 

Your  faithful  friend  and  brother, 

James  Martineau. 

From    Bishop    HUNTINGTON. 

Syracuse,  N.Y.,  March  6,  1880. 

My  dear  Mk.  Schermerhorn, — I  thank  you  for  the  kindness  and 

courtesy  of  your  note  of  invitation.     Any  tribute  from  me  to  the  memory 


74  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

or  character  of  Dr.  Cliannin<j;  —  amid  the  chorus  of  praises  that  will 
resound  at  the  coming  celebration,  made  up  of  eloquent  voices  from  all 
parts  of  the  world — can  be  of  but  small  account.  Indeed,  we  are  still 
so  much  in  the  period  of  his  living  presence  and  influence  that  it  is 
probably  doubtful  whether  any  of  us  know  the  exact  and  full  significance 
of  the  errand  on  which  he  was  sent.  What  we  do  know  is  that  he  was 
a  radiant  figure,  of  singular  power,  in  a  line  of  providential  persons  and 
events  of  which  the  end  is  not  yet. 

For  myself,  having  been  born  in  a  community  intensely  Calvinistic, 
and  having  heard  through  all  my  early  years  a  Puritan  preacher,  who, 
as  he  was  in  the  habit  of  crying  audibly  and  visibly  in  the  pulpit, 
appeared  to  me  somehow  at  the  time  to  be  crying  because  he  was 
afraid  too  many  people  would  be  saved,  I  began  to  read  Channing's 
and  Dewey's  and  Martineau's  writings  when  I  was  a  child.  Living  in 
the  country,  I  read  them  often  in  the  open  air,  and  they  are  associated 
with  running  streams  in  the  woods,  with  apple-blossoms,  with  clear  hill- 
tops, and  with  wide  spaces  of  earth  and  sky.  To  these  thoughtful  and 
devout  authors  I  have  always  felt  more  indebted,  perhaps,  for  first 
arousing  the  life  of  my  mind  and  heart,  than  to  any  others,  except  the 
inspired  men  of  the  Bible,  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne  and  Burke  and 
De  Ouincey.  It  was  because,  like  many  others,  I  found  them  when 
I  seemed  to  need  them.  Parted  from  their  guidance,  afterwards,  in 
interpreting  some  of  the  great  meanings  of  revelation  and  history, 
I  have  never  forgotten  my  unpaid  obligation,  and  am  glad  of  this 
eminent  opportunity  to  acknowledge  it. 

With  high  esteem,  yours  very  cordially, 

F.  D.  Huntington. 


From  Bishop  CLARK. 

Providence,  R.I.,  March  26,  1880. 

Reverend  and  dear  Sir, — In  reply  to  your  polite  note,  inviting  me 
to  attend  the  celebration  of  the  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  Dr. 
Channing's  birthday,  will  you  allow  me,  as  I  cannot  accept  your  kind 
invitation,  to  express  my  profound  admiration  of  this  distinguished  son 
of  Rhode  Island?  As  a  writer  and  scholar,  he  did  very  much  to  in- 
spire respect  for  our  republic  abroad,  at  a  time  when  the  question, 
"  Who  reads  an  American  book  ? "  had  received  no  satisfactory  answer. 

Not  less  eminent  as  a  philanthropist,  he  never  shrank  from  identifying 
himself  with  any  unpopular  cause  which  he  regarded  as  resting  upon  the 
foundation  of  truth  and  righteousness,  because  of  his  "  dislike  of  the 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  75 

offensive  objects  with  whicli  it  might  be  associated  " ;  and  this  is  no 
slight  praise  when  we  consider  the  peculiarly  sensitive  and  conservative 
texture  of  his  mind.  He  was  always  bold  and  outspoken,  without  being 
violent  and  extreme ;  and  his  strength  in  great  part  lay  in  his  quietness. 
What  his  precise  position  as  a  theologian  would  have  been,  if  he  had 
come  upon  the  stage  to-day, —  where,  on  the  one  hand,  the  acerbities  of 
German  doctrine  have  almost  everywhere  become  so  wonderfully  soft- 
ened, and,  on  the  other,  the  denial  of  those  supernatural  elements  in 
Christianity  and  its  records,  which  he  so  earnestly  and  devoutly  recog- 
nized, is  becoming  rampant, —  it  may  be  somewhat  difficult  to  determine. 
However  this  might  have  been,  the  sweet  and  loving  spirit  of  the  man 
would  have  remained  the  same ;  and  Christians  of  every  name  all  must 
revere  his  memory. 

It  is  a  fitting  thing  that  the  State  which  is  distinguished  by  his  birth 
should  celebrate  this  centennial  with  solemn  rites,  and  erect  on  these 
shores,  where  in  his  youth  he  walked  and  meditated,  an  abiding  memo- 
rial in  honor  of  his  name. 

Very  truly  and  respectfully  yours,        Thomas  M.  Clark. 


From  JOHN  G.  WHITTIER. 

Danvers,  Mass.,  3d  mo.  13,  1880. 
My  dear  Friend, —  I  scarcely  need  say  that  I  yield  to  no  one  in  love 
and  reverence  for  the  great  and  good  man  whose  memory  —  outliving  all 
the  prejudices  of  creed,  sect,  and  party  —  is  the  common  legacy  of  Chris- 
tendom. As  the  years  go  on,  the  value  of  that  legacy  will  be  more  and 
more  felt,  not  so  much,  perhaps,  in  doctrine  as  in  spirit, —  in  those  utter- 
ances of  a  devout  soul,  which  are  above  and  beyond  the  aiifirmation  or 
negation  of  dogma.  His  ethical  serenity  and  Christian  tenderness,  his 
hatred  of  wrong  and  oppression,  with  love  and  pity  for  the  wrong-doer, 
his  noble  pleas  for  self-culture,  temperance,  peace,  and  purity,  and,  above 
all,  his  precept  and  example  of  unquestioning  obedience  to  duty  and  the 
voice  of  God  in  the  soul,  can  never  become  obsolete  or  out-dated.  It  is 
very  fitting  that  his  memory  should  be  especially  cherished  with  that  of 
Hopkins  and  Berkeley  in  the  beautiful  island  to  which  the  common  resi- 
dence of  these  worthies  has  but  given  additional  charm  and  interest. 

Thy  friend,  John  G.  Whittier. 


From  Rev.  Dr.  HITCHCOCK. 

You  are  right  in  assuming  that  the  reverence  and  affection  and  grati- 
tude fell  to  be  due  the  memory  of  Dr.  Channing  are  sluit  up  within  no 


76  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

denominational  boundaries.  New  England  may  well  be  proud  of  him. 
Even  Puritan  New  England  had  much  to  do  in  the  making  of  liim.  His 
roots  went  down  deep  into  her  soil,  ethical  and  spiritual.  Her  words 
of  doctrine  brightened  his  fibre.  It  was  once  my  good  fortune  to  hear 
him  in  a  pulpit  prayer;  and  I  shall  never  forget  how  his  spirit  seemed 
to  be  cleaving  the  sky.  The  tones  of  his  voice  went  out  afar.  That,  I 
should  say,  was  about  three  years  before  his  death.  Not  far  from  the 
same  time,  I  spent  an  evening  with  him  at  his  house  in  Boston.  We 
talked  of  Coleridge,  and  the  influence  he  was  having  upon  the  rising 
generation  of  thinkers  and  preachers.  He  made  on  me  the  impression 
of  a  widening  horizon  for  himself  year  by  year. 

RoswELL  D.  Hitchcock. 


WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON'S    LETTER. 

BosTOX,  April  5,  1877. 

I  cheerfully  respond  to  the  request  made  in  your  letter,  by  which  I  am 
informed  that  a  meeting  will  be  held  in  your  city  on  Monday  evening 
next,  with  reference  to  making  arrangements  for  celebrating  the  hun- 
dredth anniversar}'  of  the  birth  of  William  Ellery  Channing.  Such  a 
celebration  will  be  a  most  fitting  tribute  to  the  memory  of  one  whose 
intellectual  power,  moral  excellence,  nobly  catholic  and  widely  philan- 
thropic spirit,  profound  regard  for  truth  and  right,  courageous  disregard 
for  popular  sentiment  in  the  matter  of  theological  dissent,  and  a  pervad- 
ing spirituality  of  thought  and  purpose,  entitle  him  to  rank  with  the  fore- 
most teachers,  exemplars,  and  benefactors  of  mankind.  As  he  never 
sought  human  applause,  he  needs  nothing  of  it  now ;  yet,  having  conse- 
crated his  life  to  all  that  is  beautiful  in  humility.  Godlike  in  aspiration, 
uplifting  in  virtue,  ennobling  in  true  piety,  and  world-regenerating  in 
divine  love,  let  all  sectarian  shibboleths  be  forgotten  at  such  a  commem- 
oration as  is  contemplated ;  and  let  the  wise  and  good  of  every  sect  and 
party  improve  the  opportunity  to  show  their  appreciation  of  his  worth. 
For,  in  regard  to  doctrinal  views  or  Scriptural  interpretations  conscien- 
tiously held,  no  one  is  more  orthodox  or  heterodox  than  another;  and 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  heretic  or  heresy,  on  Protestant  ground,  any 
more  than  there  is  of  papal  infallibility,  seeing  that  the  right  of  private 
judgment  in  all  matters  of  religious  faith  and  practice  is  admitted  to  be 
absolute,  and  that  no  higher  or  better  test  can  be  applied  than  this, 
"  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them." 

For  his  testimonies  and  appeals  in  behalf  of  the  suffering  poor  and 
workincr-classes,   the    millions    that    were   groaning   in   bondage   at   the 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  'J'J 

South,  and  for  the  incoming  of  the  reign  of  universal  peace  on  earth, 
Dr.  Channing  deserves  to  be  held  in  grateful  remembrance.  Especially 
is  he  to  be  honored  as  the  eloquent  advocate  of  free  thought,  free 
speech,  free  inquiry,  and  non-conformity  where  acquiescence  would  be 
in  violation  of  the  understanding  and  conscience.  And  nothing  could 
be  more  guarded,  comprehensive,  or  sublime  than  his  definition  of  the 
human  mind.  "  I  call  that  mind  free,"  he  says,  "  which  zealously  guards 
its  intellectual  rights  and  powers;  which  calls  no  man  master;  which 
does  not  content  itself  with  a  passive  or  hereditary  faith ;  which  opens 
itself  to  light  whensoever  it  may  come ;  which  receives  new  truth  as  an 
angel  from  heaven ;  which,  whilst  consulting  others,  inquires  still  more 
of  the  oracle  within  itself,  and  uses  instructions  from  abroad,  not  to 
supersede,  but  to  quicken  and  exalt  its  own  energies."  .  .  . 

Wm.  Lloyd  Garrison. 


The  reading  of  these  letters,  which  was  frequently  inter- 
rupted by  applause,  was  followed  by  the  singing  of  Emer- 
son's hymn,  "  Here  holy  thought  a  light  has  shed."  His 
Excellency  Governor  Van  Zandt  was  then  introduced  as 
the  president  of  the  meeting,  and  was  received  with  hearty 
applause.     The  Governor  said  :  — 

It  is  pleasant  for  me  to  preside  over  this  great  assembly, 
and  I  come  as  the  chief  magistrate  of  Rhode  Island ;  and 
you,  in  doing  honor  to  one  of  the  brightest  and  best  of  the 
sons  of  the  State,  are  here  to-night  with  fragrant  forget-me- 
nots  for  the  cradle  and  with  garlands  of  white  immortelles  for 
the  grave  of  William  Ellery  Channing.  There  is  a  curious 
little  book  in  the  archives  of  the  State  at  Providence,  which 
contains  the  original  compact  made  by  the  first  settlers  of 
this  colony.  It  is  written  in  a  cramped,  old-fashioned  hand, 
with  references  to  the  Books  of  Exodus,  Chronicles,  and 
Kings,  and  pledges  its  signers,  in  the  presence  of  Jehovah, 
to  incorporate  themselves  into  a  body  politic  with  his  help. 
In  a  period  of  sharp  theological  distinctions  and  bitter  secta- 
rian controversies,  the  fathers  of  our  Commonwealth,  ignor- 


^8  CIIANXIN(;    CENTENARY. 

ing  all  subtle  technicalities  then  so  prevalent,  organized  a 
government  (somewhat  like  the  Israelitish  judges),  and  in  it 
all  systems  of  belief  were  tolerated  and  protected.  And,  as 
Roger  Williams  and  the  fathers  planted,  so  have  we  reaped. 
There  are  three  men  after  Roger  Williams  who  have  always 
appeared  to  me  to  fitly  represent  the  breadth  and  depth  of 
Rhode  Island's  religious  toleration, —  Bishop  Berkeley,  Dr. 
Hopkins,  and  Dr.  Channing.  The  first  was  the  "consum- 
mate flower"  of  the  then  conservative  Established  Church 
of  England.  He  was  for  a  long  time  an  attached  resident 
of  this  beautiful  island.  Dr.  Hopkins  was  of  sterner,  tougher 
stuff.  It  was  a  new  country,  and  there  was  heavy  work  to 
do  in  its  young  theology.  Rocks  were  to  be  blasted,  stumps 
pulled  up,  subsoil  ploughing  done.  He  had  to  fight  with 
slavery,  which  was  young  and  strong  and  black  and  profit- 
able. Most  of  his  salary  came  from  men  who  made  their 
money  in  the  slave-trade.  It  was  not  a  time  for  rosebuds 
and  perfume.  The  men  required  strong  meat ;  and  Dr. 
Hopkins  gave  it  to  them,  and  then  shook  them  over  the  pit 
in  a  way  to  promote  spiritual  digestion.  And,  a  hundred 
years  ago  to-day,  Channing  came  among  men  almost  like  an 
angel.  He  was  tender  and  pure  and  good  ;  and  yet  he  was 
brave  and  strong  and  positive.  He,  as  well  as  Dr.  Hopkins, 
fought  the  black  affright  of  slavery, —  the  one  with  the 
battle-axe,  the  other  with  the  cimeter.  These  three  men, 
differing  in  almost  every  essential  particular,  are  equally  the 
glory  and  the  love  of  Rhode  Island  ;  and  to-day  we  begin  to 
erect  a  beautiful  memorial  edifice  to  William  Ellery  Chan- 
ning. Its  outer  walls  will  be  of  stone  as  gray  as  the  old 
rocks  of  our  cliffs  ;  its  mullioned  windows  will  be  stained 
with  the  gathered  glories  of  our  sunsets  ;  its  spire  will  point, 
as  he  did,  steadily  heavenward  ;  its  bells  will  ring  for  the  wed- 
dings and  toll  for  the  funerals  of  many  generations  yet 
unborn ;    its  doors  will  open  for  worshippers  of  all   beliefs 


I 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  79 

and  every  land.  The  bride  will  enter  there  with  orange- 
flowers  and  smiles  ;  and  the  pale,  still  dead  will  be  borne  in 
and  out  in  silence  and  with  tears.  But,  beyond  and  above 
and  around  it,  will  glow  like  an  aureole  the  memory  of  the 
saintly  man  who,  one  hundred  years  ago  to-night,  in  this  old 
town,  when  the  mist  came  in  from  the  ocean  at  night,  was  a 
little,  helpless  infant  in  his  cradle. 

Rev.  Dr.  Hosmer  then  gave  pleasant  reminiscences  of 
Channing,  saying  he  first  saw  him  fifty  years  ago  in  Cam- 
bridge, heard  him  preach,  and  became  acquainted  with  him 
slightly.  His  remarks  were  so  full  of  wisdom  that  I  used 
often  to  go  to  Boston  to  hear  him.  I  remember  his  tones, — 
that  voice  so  wonderfully  modulated,  so  full  of  sympathy.  I 
wonder  that,  amid  all  these  grand  utterances,  more  has  not 
been  said  about  Channing's  strength  and  courage.  He  was 
strong  to  wrench  himself  out  of  a  narrow  creed ;  and  he 
showed  his  courage  in  his  attacks  on  the  doctrinal  theories, 
wonderful  for  their  sharpness.  Let  the  wonderful  legacy  of 
thought  left  us  by  Channing  lead  us  onward. 

Mrs.  Martha  Perry  Lowe,  of  Somerville,  next  read  the 
following  original  poem  :  — 

THE    PERFECT    LIFE. 
By  Mrs.  Martha  P.  Lowe. 

The  Perfect  Life, —  his  last  bequest, 

The  gleanings  of  his  autumn  morn : 
The  latest  gathering  is  the  best, 

The  sweetest  harvest  it  hath  borne. 

What  large  intent,  what  lofty  height, 

What  visions  warming  every  page 
With  fairer  futures  which  shall  right 

The  wrongs  and  sorrows  of  the  age  1 

What  summits  of  celestial  calm, 

Elastic  youth,  and  high  desire; 
What  droppings  of  refreshing  balm, 

What  stirrings  of  prophetic  fire  ! 


So  ClIANNING    CENTKNAKY. 

Uluniined  pages,  burn  and  shine, 

Consuming  all  our  dross  of  sin, 
Till  human  work  may  grow  divine, 

And  Christ's  new  kingdom  shall  begin  ! 

And  yet  his  book  may  turn  to  dust ; 

The  printed  word  shall  fade  at  length  : 
His  living  gospel  may  we  trust. 

His  Rock  of  Ages  be  our  strength. 

RcUirn,  immortal  Seer,  to  find 

The  secret  meaning  of  our  day  ; 
Return,  beloved  Saint,  to  bind 

Our  hearts  in  wisdom's  pleasant  way ! 

Descend,  O  Spirit-form  serene. 

And  light  the  paths  thou  once  hast  trod  ; 

Show  us  the  Master  thou  hast  seen, 
And  lift  us  to  the  Mount  of  God ! 

Rev,  E.  E.  Hale  humorously  referred  to  the  many  people 
who  said  they  had  got  Channing's  knack  in  everything,  but 
who,  in  reality,  knew  little  or  nothing  of  him  or  his  ways. 
He  then  delivered  a  glowing  eulogy  of  Channing,  and  spoke 
at  some  length  of  the  advantages  of  the  theological  freedom 
which  such  men  as  Hopkins  and  Berkeley  and  Ghanning 
found  in  Rhode  Island,  and  which  was  so  beneficial  in  devel- 
oping noble  traits  in  their  characters  at  a  time  when  in 
neighboring  States  their  desire  to  extend  knowledge  of 
God  in  their  own  way  would  have  been  frustrated. 

In  introducing  Julia  Ward  Howe,  the  Governor  made  a 
graceful  allusion  to  her  "  Battle  Hymn  of  the  Republic," 
which  "  inspired  an  enthusiasm  worth  a  hundred  thousand 
men."  Before  reading  an  original  poem,  written  for  the 
occasion,  Mrs.  Howe  gave  it  as  her  opinion  that  the  events 
of  the  day  would  lay  firmer  the  true  foundations  of  re- 
ligion among  men.  In  early  life,  and  once  only,  she  heard 
Channing  preach,  and  was  so  impressed  with  his  sermon 
that  she  "told  no  lies  after  that,  neither  did  she  prevari- 
cate in  any  way."     [Applause.] 


I 


CELEBRATION     AT     NEWPORT.  8l 


MRS.   HOWE'S   POEM, 

I  come  to-day  a  verse  to  build, 

Which  skill  should  match  with  arches  fine, 
A  task  to  set  the  workman's  guild 

Whose  strength  shall  stand  for  things  divine. 

In  this  fair  isle,  by  Nature  blest, 

Where  men  for  health  and  pleasure  throng, 
I  call  a  spirit  from  its  rest ; 

I  summon  back  a  soul  with  song. 

For  God,  who  gave  this  genial  sky, 

The  rapture  of  this  mellow  air, 
Did  lend  in  happy  days  gone  by 

A  presence  grand,  an  influence  rare. 

Our  beauteous  seasons  wax  and  wane, 
And  bear  us  on  to  fate  and  death  ; 

But  he  shall  bloom  and  bloom  again 
In  every  generation's  breath. 

Oh !  fine  and  brave  that  subtle  hand 

Which  found  the  knots,  so  small  and  strong. 

By  which  Belief  and  Passion  band 
To  do  divine  and  human  wrong. 

He  caught  the  echo  of  the  wail 

Which  once  from  Calvary's  mountain  rolled, 
When  felt  the  Love  that  cannot  fail 

The  spite  of  superstition  old. 

His  voice  took  up  the  trumpet  blast 
Which  Hope's  glad  resurrection  blew, 

When  out  of  mystic  shadow  passed 
The  glory  that  the  Master  knew. 

O  deep  of  heart !  O  true  of  thought ! 

The  temper  of  thy  perfect  steel 
In  Heaven's  high  armory  was  wrought, 

The  strength  of  justice  to  reveal. 

The  Negro  in  the  Southern  wild 

Had  cause  to  bless  thy  champion  name  ; 

The  Northern  freeman  for  his  child 
Thy  gracious  heritage  doth  claim. 


S2  CIlAXNINCi    ci-:xii:\.\KN'. 

The  faitli  that  inakctli  Woman  free 

For  humankind  to  do  and  dare, 
The  peace  that  dwells  with  liberty, 

Were  in  thy  teaching  and  thy  prayer. 

Here  the  foimdation-stonc  we  lay 

Of  some  fine  fabric  that  shall  rise, 
To  image  to  a  later  day 

Thee,  greatly  good  and  purely  wise. 

Where  God  vouchsafes  his  greatest  gift, — 

The  Prophet,  crown  of  all  desire, — 
Let  us  our  duteous  emblem  lift. 

Let  us  endeavor  and  aspire. 

So  shall  the  work  we  strive  to  rear 

Be  crowned  with  blessing  in  our  sight. 
And,  like  the  life  we  honor  here. 

Reflect  the  everlasting  light. 

A.  Bronson  Alcott  paid  a  glowing  tribute  to  the  memory 
of  his  friend,  to  whom  he  said  was  due  the  transformation 
of  religion.  During  an  extended  visit  to  the  West,  he  could 
not  help  witnessing  the  great  respect  which  men  showed 
everywhere  to  the  memory  of  Dr.  Channing.  After  the 
singing  of  Bryant's  hymn,  "Yet  doth  the  star  of  Bethlehem 
shed,"  Miss  Elizabeth  Peabody  made  a  deeply  interesting 
address,  and  was  followed  with  remarks  by  Revs.  N.  S. 
Folsom  and  Charles  F.  Barnard,  both  of  whom  have  very 
vivid  memories  of  Channing,  since  their  lives  were  deeply 
touched  by  his  own.  Mr.  Barnard  offered  to  give  to  the 
new  Memorial  Church  the  valuable  oil  portrait  of  Chan- 
nins:  which  was  before  the  audience,  on  condition  that  the 
picture  of  Channing's  mother  should  be  procured  and 
hung  as  its  companion  piece.  As  a  last  exercise  before 
Mr.  Schermerhorn's  benediction,  Whittier's  hymn  was 
sung: — 

"  Henceforth  my  heart  shall  sigh  no  more 
For  olden  time  and  holier  shore ; 
God's  love  and  blessing,  then  and  there, 
Are  now  and  here  and  everywhere." 


THE  BOSTON   CELEBRATION. 


Boston's  expression  of  interest  in  Dr.  Channing's  cen- 
tenary was  thoroughly  characteristic  of  that  most  individual 
of  American  cities.  No  attempt  was  made,  as  in  many 
chief  centres  of  America  and  Great  Britain,  to  arouse  public 
attention  by  a  great  catholic  meeting,  in  which  men  and 
women  of  all  sorts  of  religious  beliefs  should  be  invited 
to  express  their  appreciation  of  Dr.  Channing  and  his  in- 
fluence. Possibly,  the  fact  that  many  Bostonians  had 
accepted  invitations  to  participate  in  the  Newport  celebra- 
tion, which  had  been  widely  advertised  for  several  months 
beforehand,  may  account  for  the  lack  of  general  interest 
in  the  special  Boston  meeting.  More  probably,  the  meet- 
ing held  in  Arlington  Street  Church  failed  to  arouse  wider 
interest,  simply  because  no  attempt  was  made  to  provide 
for  the  expression  of  that  interest.  It  was,  in  its  plan, 
exclusively  a  Unitarian  meeting,  so  far  as  the  speakers 
were  concerned  ;  and  the  congregation  seemed  to  be  chiefly 
of  the  same  religious  complexion. 

But  the  birthday  meeting  was  only  one  of  many  inter- 
esting occasions,  in  which  Boston  quietly  expressed  her 
love  and  reverence  for  her  great  preacher  of  fifty  years  ago. 
In  all  the  Unitarian  churches  of  the  city  and  neighborhood, 


S4  C HA NX I  NO    CENTENARY. 

and  in  some  churches  of  other  faiths,  appropriate  reference 
was  made  to  the  anniversary  ;  and,  in  many  of  them,  special 
memorial  discourses  were  delivered.  A  few  of  these  were 
afterward  published  at  length,  in  the  newspapers  or  in 
pamphlet  form  ;  while  many  of  them  were  briefly  commented 
upon  by  the  local  press.  An  interesting  union  service  of 
Sunday-schools  was  held  in  the  Church  of  the  Discijoles  ; 
and  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society  appropriate  reference  was  made  to  Dr.  Channing 
by  the  President,  the  Hon.  Robert  C.  Winthrop.  Finally, 
the  annual  meeting  of  the  American  Unitarian  Association, 
May  25,  was  especially  dev^oted  to  the  celebration  of  Chan- 
ning's  memory.  Full  reports  of  a  few  of  the  more  inter- 
esting addresses  delivered  in  Boston  are  here  presented. 


THE   MEETING   IN  ARLINGTON   STREET  OHUROH. 

[As  reported  in  the  Christian  Register,  April  17.] 

On  the  1st  of  June,  1803,  William  Ellery  Channing,  then 
entered  on  his  twenty-fourth  year,  was  ordained  as  pastor 
of  "the  Religious  Society  worshipping  God  in  Federal 
Street,"  which  is  now  known  as  the  Church  in  Arling- 
ton Street.  The  late  Mr.  George  Ticknor  was  led  as  a  child 
by  the  hand  of  his  father  to  the  ordination  services,  of  which 
he  understood  and  remembered  little,  except  that  near  the 
close  the  pale  and  frail-looking  young  man,  whom  he 
thought  of  as  soon  to  die,  arose  and  gave  out  a  hymn 
in  a  voice  so  tremulous  and  thrilling,  and  a  manner  so 
devout  and  earnest,  that  even  the  words  of  one  stanza 
seized  his  childish  attention  so  vividly  as  never  to  be  for- 
gotten :  — 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  85 

"  My  tongue  repeats  her  vows, 

Peace  to  this  sacred  house  ! 
For  here  my  friends  and  brethren  dwell ; 

And  since  my  glorious  God 

Makes  this  his  blest  abode, 
My  soul  shall  ever  love  thee  well." 

The  pastoral  relation  then  formed  continued  till  Dr. 
Channing's  death,  October  2,  1842.  The  site  of  the  build- 
ing in  which  he  preached  for  nearly  forty  years  (corner  of 
Federal  and  Channing  Streets),  like  that  whole  section  of 
the  city  of  Boston,  is  now  occupied  for  business  purposes. 
One  Sunday  afternoon  in  the  summer  of  1859,  ^^e  old 
church,  about  to  be  demolished,  was  opened  for  a  final 
religious  service,  in  which  thirteen  ministers  took  part, —  all, 
or  nearly  all,  of  whom  had  been  at  some  time  members  of 
Dr.  Channing's  congregation,  and  had  been  led  into  the 
ministry  by  his  influence.  Rev.  J.  F.  W.  Ware,  the  present 
pastor,  sees  in  his  congregation  but  few  of  the  faces  which 
used  to  look  up  to  Dr.  Channing  forty  years  ago  ;  but  the 
society  may  well  preserve,  with  affection  and  pride,  the 
memory  of  one  whose  name  has  done  so  much  to  make  its 
own  annals  illustrious. 

A  public  meeting  in  honor  of  Dr.  Channing's  memory 
was  held  on  the  evening  of  April  7,  in  the  Arlington  Street 
Church,  at  which  many  prominent  citizens  and  clergymen 
were  present.  On  the  table  in  front  of  the  pulpit,  sur- 
rounded with  flowers  and  vines,  stood  the  bust  of  Channing, 
"  Praise  God  in  his  hoHness  "  was  the  anthem  which  uplifted 
the  hearts  of  the  people.  Rev.  Dr.  Lothrop  led  in  prayer, 
and  a  passage  was  sung  from  Whittier's  Elegy  on  Channing, 
beginning, — 

"  Not  vainly  did  old  poets  tell, 

Nor  vainly  did  old  genius  paint, 
God's  great  and  crowning  miracle, 
The  hero  and  the  saint." 


86  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

The  leading  address  of  tlie  ev^ening"  was  on 

CHANNING'8    PLACE    IN    HISTORY. 
By  Rev.  James  Freeman  Clarke,  D.D. 

I  regard  it  as  an  honor  to  be  asked  by  my  friend,  the 
pastor  of  this  society,  to  speak  to  you  this  evening  on  this 
hundredth  birthday  of  Dr.  Channing.  It  is  also  a  happi- 
ness. Channing  was  the  inspiration  of  my  youth.  He  gave 
me  a  higher  conception  than  I  could  find  elsewhere  of  the 
worth  of  the  Christian  ministry.  He  glorified  and  honored 
it  by  his  own  life,  and  by  his  thoughts  lifted  the  veil  of 
routine  which  had  obscured  the  divine  lineaments  of  Chris- 
tianity. In  maturer  life,  Channing  stood  before  me  as 
master  in  sacred  study  and  in  practical  reforms.  When  his 
first  work  on  slavery  appeared,  I  was  editing  a  monthly 
magazine  in  Kentucky,  and  rejoiced  in  the  opportunity  of 
publishing  in  that  work  copious  extracts  from  his  volume. 
I  recollect  giving  his  "  Letter  to  Henry  Clay,"  on  the  an- 
nexation of  Texas,  to  a  Kentucky  planter,  who  was  an 
admirer  of  Channing,  and  opposed  to  slavery,  though  a 
slaveholder.  He  had  the  little  pamphlet  interleaved,  and 
kept  it  in  his  pocket,  reading  it  at  intervals,  and  writing 
his  comments  upon  it  till  he  had  filled  it  with  his  notes, 
and  then  returned  it  to  me.  It  was  interesting  to  see  how 
the  mind  of  Channing  had  taken  hold  of  this  intelligent 
Kentuckian,  and  sent  him  in  a  new  direction  of  thought. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  Dr.  Channing,  at  my  request,  wrote 
for  the  Western  Messenger  his  letter  on  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  Such  an  act  of  kindness  as  that  can  only  be  ap- 
preciated by  those  who  are  trying  to  get  a  hearing  amid 
uncongenial  surroundings.  But  Dr.  Channing  was  always 
ready  to  lend  the  powerful  aid  of  his  great  reputation  and 
commanding  intelligence  to  any  struggling  or  unpopular 
cause,  if   he  believed  it,  in  the   main,  the    cause    of   truth. 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  87 

Nor  can  I  forget  how,  when  still  a  young  man,  I  came 
to  this  city,  and  with  others  formed  the  Church  of  the 
Disciples  here,  Dr.  Channing  lent  me  again  the  aid  of  his 
sympathy  and  counsel,-  advising  us  as  to  our  plans,  en- 
couraging our  design,  and  being  present  at  several  of  our 
meetings.  I  therefore  thankfully  accept  this  opportunity 
of  saying  a  few  words  to-night  in  honor  of  this  good  and 
great  man. 

W/iaf  is  Chafining' s  place  in  Jiistory  ?  What  will  be  the 
nature  of  his  influence,  and  what  his  position  among  the 
prophets  and  teachers  of  mankind  }  This  theme  is  too  great 
to  be  adequately  treated  at  this  time  ;  but  it  is  so  interesting 
that  a  few  suggestions  may  lead  each  one  present  to  make 
himself  better  acquainted  with  the  life  and  thought  of  this 
great  man. 

"  A  prophet  .-*  yea,  I  say  unto  you,  and  more  than  a 
prophet."  Every  man  truly  great  in  thought,  who  is  to 
influence  mankind  widely  and  long,  must  be  something 
of  a  prophet.  He  must  see  so  deeply  and  truly  as  to  be 
able  to  foresee.  His  insight  must  lead  to  foresight.  He 
who  has  any  real  gift  of  vision  apprehends  principles  at 
work  which  are  to  govern  the  future.  He  beholds  in  his 
imagination  a  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth.  Thus  the 
seer  is  always  a  prophet.  He  may  be  a  prophet  in  the 
material  order,  like  Columbus,  seeing  in  his  dreams  the  far- 
off  continent  in  the  West  on  which  no  earthly  eye  had 
yet  fallen.  Or,  like  the  great  inventors  of  our  own  day,  he 
may  be  haunted  by  unborn  discoveries  which  are  to  change 
the  face  of  the  world.  In  the  higher  sphere  of  religious 
thought,  the  prophet  foresees  the  dawn  of  new  truths  when 
all  is  night  to  others.  There  is  nothing  unnatural  in  this 
fore-vision.  Jesus  has  classed  it  with  the  sagacity  which 
foretells  to-morrow's  weather  by  to-day's  sunset. 

Baron  Bunsen    has    therefore  correctly  classed  Channing 


88  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

among  the  prophets  ;  for,  more  than  most  men,  by  a  pro- 
found sight  of  the  present  he  foresaw  the  future.  The 
nature,  quality,  and  extent  of  this  vision  will  determine 
Channing's   place  in   history. 

Although  we  are  all  familiar  with  the  events  of  Chan- 
ning's life,  yet  let  us  briefly  survey  them,  as  this  very  survey 
will  be  to  some  extent  the  contemplation  of  his  great  career 
and  character. 

Born  in  Newport,  April  7,  1780,  grandson  of  William 
Ellery,  signer  of  the  Declaration,  who  was  a  type  of  the 
best  New  England  character ;  his  father  an  eminent  lawyer 
and  accomplished  gentleman,  his  mother  one  of  the  New 
England  matrons,  some  of  whom  we  may  all  remember, — 
calm,  strong,  pure,  self-possessed,  with  the  inborn  truth 
which  compels  others  to  be  true, —  Channing  began  life 
under  the  best  conditions.  No  matter  how  great  any  man 
may  be  by  his  convictions  and  his  personal  devotion  to  high 
ends,  two-thirds  of  his  character  rests  on  a  foundation  out- 
side of  himself.  Character  results  from  the  three  factors 
of  organization,  circumstances,  and  free  choice.  Some  of 
the  life  of  past  generations  is  organized  in  each  new-born 
child,  and  on  that  basis  of  organization  he  must  forever 
stand.  We  seem  to  see,  in  Channing's  character,  an  inher- 
itance of  the  old  Puritan  conscience  and  the  old  Puritan 
self-reliance,  refined  and  purified  by  passing  through  the 
men  and  women  whose  souls  were  enlarged  by  the  earnest 
thought  which  went  before  the  American  Revolution. 
Channing  owed  much  to  himself  :  he  made  of  himself  more 
than  most  men.  He  kept  his  eye  steadily  fixed  on  the 
truths  which  lift  the  soul  near  to  God.  But  he  did  not 
make  his  own  simplicity  of  soul,  his  own  integrity  of  pur- 
pose, his  own  ardent  love  of  freedom,  hatred  of  oppression, 
courage  to  stand  alone  against  all  odds.  These  qualities, 
I  think,  were  born  in  him ;  and  he  was  not  obliged  to  waste 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  89 

any  of  his  strength  in  cultivating  them.  They  were  his 
birthright  gifts  from  a  noble  past.  What  belonged  to  him- 
self was  that  intense  and  concentrated  singleness  of  purpose 
which  gave  to  all  his  natural  powers  their  best  opportunity, 
which  unfolded  them  to  their  full  extent. 

A  part  of  every  man's  character  comes  from  his  organiza- 
tion, another  part  from  education,  including  in  this  term 
that  which  comes  from  environment,  from  circumstances, 
and  especially  from  the  atmosphere  of  thought  in  which  we 
live.  Who  can  tell  the  mighty  and  irresistible  influence  of 
the  opinions  which  have  passed  into  the  very  air  we  breathe, 
the  commonplaces  of  all  conversation,  tacitly  assumed  in  all 
discussion  }  They  are  taken  for  granted,  not  stated  :  there- 
fore there  is  no  opportunity  to  question  or  deny  them. 

The  religious,  moral,  social,  political,  intellectual  atmos- 
phere which  young  Channing  breathed  was,  on  the  whole, 
healthy.  His  family  were  strong  Federalists.  Washington 
and  Jay  ha'd  visited  his  father's  house.  In  religion,  they 
were  moderately  orthodox,  according  to  that  type  which  was 
gradually  passing  into  Unitarianism.  The  moral  and  social 
sentiments  with  two  exceptions  were  good, —  those  two 
being  occasioned  by  the  rum  manufacture  and  the  slave- 
trade,  in  both  of  which  Newport  was  engaged.  But  perhaps 
it  was  necessary  for  him  to  be  brought  thus  near  to  the 
source  of  such  great  evils,  in  order  to  react  against  both  in 
the  cause  of  temperance  and  freedom. 

Dr.  Channing  speaks  of  the  Federalists  with  great  re- 
spect in  his  paper  on  the  Union.  "  A  purer  party,"  he 
says,  "never  existed."  "Its  failure,"  he  says,  "was  despon- 
dency." "It  had  not  sufficient  confidence  in  our  free  insti- 
tutions, nor  in  the  moral  ability  of  the  people  to  uphold 
them."  He  goes  on  to  draw  a  striking  portrait  of  George 
Cabot,  the  leader  of  the  Federalists,  and,  giving  him  credit 
for  his  high  qualities  of  mind  and  heart,  thinks  he  wanted 
"the  wisdom  of  hope." 


90  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

And  as  he  illustrates  the  excellences  and  defects  of  the 
Federalists  by  the  character  of  George  Cabot,  so  he  illus- 
trates the  excellences  and  defects  of  moderate  Calvinism  by 
the  character  of  Dr.  Stiles.  He  says  that  in  his  earliest 
years  there  was  no  one  whom  he  regarded  with  equal  rever- 
ence. Calvinism  was  breaking  up  all  around  him,  under  the 
influence  of  men  like  Ezra  Stiles  and  Dr.  Hopkins.  Of  the 
latter,  Dr.  Channing  also  speaks  with  great  respect.  He 
mentions  that  when  a  young  man  he  preached  for  Dr.  Hop- 
kins, at  his  own  request,  in  his  church, —  the  very  building 
in  Newport  in  which  at  present  a  congregation  meets,  as  we 
are  meeting  here,  to  remember  gratefully  Channing's  name 
and  services.  After  the  young  Channing  had  concluded  the 
service,  the  good  old  man,  Dr.  Hopkins,  turned  to  him  with 
a  benignant  smile,  saying  "that  theology  was  still  imper- 
fect," and  that  he  hoped  that  he,  Channing,  "would  live  to 
carry  it   to    perfection."       The7i,  we  may  say  with    Milton, 

"  Old  experience  did  attain 
To  something  of  prophetic  strain." 

It  was  a  very  happy  thing  for  Channing  to  be  early  asso- 
ciated with  these  two  leaders  of  New  England  theology, 
both  of  whom,  while  claiming  to  be  orthodox,  had  broken 
with  a  large  part  of  the  old  orthodox  creed  and  traditions. 
Their  example  must  have  encouraged  Channing  to  follow  in 
that  path,  and  go  much  further. 

But  it  was  not  from  human  environment  alone  that  he 
drew  inspiration.  Early  and  always,  his  soul  was  fed  by  the 
influences  of  Nature.  Miss  Peabody,  in  her  very  valuable 
monograph  on  Channing,  just  published,  which  admits  us  to 
many  details  of  his  daily  life,  says  that,  when  at  Newport 
in  the  summer,  he  seemed  "to  watch  the  growth  of  every 
flower,  enjoying  the  sunshine  and  air,  and  seeming  to  have 
some  secret  intimations  of  all  that  passed  in  the  skies,  call- 
ing the  family  out  often  to  look  at  some  beautiful  effect  of 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  9I 

light  or  other  passing  loveliness  of  Nature."  He  regarded, 
she  says,  "all  summer-time  as  though  it  were  a  religious  fes- 
tival, the  rites  of  which  were  the  sight  of  natural  beauty  and 
sympathy  with  innocent  animal  life."  And  who  does  not 
remember  his  description  in  his  Newport  sermon  of  New- 
port beach,  the  noble  place  for  his  study  in  his  youth  }  "No 
spot  on  earth,"  says  he,  "has  helped  to  form  me  so  much 
as  that  beach.  There  I  lifted  up  my  voice  in  praise  amid 
the  tempest.  There,  softened  by  beauty,  I  poured  out  my 
thanksgiving  and  contrite  confessions.  There,  in  reveren- 
tial sympathy  with  the  mighty  power  around  me,  I  became 
conscious  of  power  within.  There,  struggling  thoughts  and 
emotions  broke  forth,  moved  to  utterance  by  the  eloquence 
of  the  winds  and  waves.  There  began  a  happiness  surpass- 
ing all  earthly  pleasures,  the  happiness  of  communing  with 
the  works  of  God." 

In  Harvard  University,  where  he  was  in  the  same  class 
with  Judge  Story  and  Dr.  Tuckerman,  he  describes  a  criti- 
cal and  dangerous  condition  of  things.  "The  French  Revo- 
lution," he  says,  "had  diseased  the  imagination  and  unsettled 
the  understanding  of  men.  The  foundations  of  social  order, 
loyalty,  tradition,  reverence,  were  shaken.  The  authority  of 
the  past  was  gone.  The  tone  of  speech  and  books  was  pre- 
sumptuous. The  tendency  of  all  classes  was  to  scepticism." 
Paine's  A£;-e  of  Reason  was  read  by  the  students  very  gen- 
erally. We  think  that  there  is  a  great  deal  of  doubt  and 
unbelief  now  in  the  world ;  but  it  is  probable  that  there  is 
more  religious  faith  at  present,  by  far,  than  when  Channing 
was  in  college.  And,  if  so,  we  owe  it  in  a  measure  to  the 
proof  his  writings  have  given  that  perfect  freedom  of 
thought,  entire  confidence  in  the  reason,  and  a  profound 
conviction  of  great  spiritual  realities  can  go  harmoniously 
together. 

While  in  college,  he  passed  through  an  intellectual  expe- 


92  CHANNING    CENTENARY.      < 

ricncc  which  gave  him  much  of  his  power  over  the  thoughts 
of  men.  Two  authors,  Ilutcheson  and  Price,  awakened  his 
mind, —  one  to  the  belief  in  disinterested  goodness  in  God 
and  man,  the  other  to  faith  in  eternal  ideas  of  truth  and 
right,  seen  in  the  depths  of  every  soul  by  some  inward  intui- 
tion, "a  light,  lighting  every  man  who  comes  into  the 
world."  The  first  of  these  convictions  came  to  him  as  he 
was  walking,  while  he  read,  in  a  field  on  Dana's  Hill.  The 
place  and  hour  remained  sacred  in  his  memory.  There  he 
passed  through  a  new  birth  into  a  higher  world  of  convic- 
tion. He  saw  the  glory  of  the  divine  goodness,  a  universe 
of  progress  and  order,  and  the  possibility  of  absolute  devo- 
tion to  the  will  of  God.  "  I  longed  in  that  hour  to  die,"  said 
he,  "and  to  go  where  only  such  thoughts  could  have  room. 
But,  when  I  found  I  must  live,  I  determined  to  do  some- 
thing worthy  of  such  thoughts."  This  was  the  result  of 
Hutcheson's  Moral  Philosophy.  The  other  came  from  Dr. 
Price's  book.  Dissertations  on  Matter  and  Spirit.  "That," 
said  he,  "saved  me  from  the  philosophy  of  Locke,  and 
taught  me  to  believe  in  the  Platonic  philosophy  of  ideas." 
It  was  worth  while  that  these  two  books  should  have  been 
written,  if  no  one  except  Channing  had  ever  read  them ;  for 
his  whole  theological  influence  took  its  bias  and  direction 
from  that  reading.  English  Unitarianism  and  early  Ameri- 
can Unitarianism  had  followed  Priestley's  philosophy,  which 
was  based  on  Locke's  doctrine  that  all  our  knowledge  con- 
sists in  transformed  sensations.  But  Dr.  Channing  inaugu- 
rated a  spiritual  theology,  based  on  faith  in  the  soul  as  born 
with  infinite  capacities  and  divine  adaptations,  and  in  this 
may  be  found  the  secret  of  a  large  part  of  his  power  as 
a  theologian. 

Behold  him,  then,  having  passed  through  his  studies,  and 
his  year  and  a  half  of  experience  at  the  South,  entering  his 
profession.     In  a  letter  to  a  friend,  written  at  this  time,  he 


J 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  93 

says,  "  In  my  view,  religion  is  another  name  for  happiness ; 
and  I  am  most  cheerful  when  I  am  most  religious." 

His  religious  life  had  been  much  quickened  while  in  Vir- 
ginia, though  he  describes  the  unbelief  in  all  religion  as 
greater  than  it  was  in  Massachusetts.  "  Christianity  is  here 
breathing  its  last,"  says  he.  "I  cannot  find  a  friend  with 
whom  to  converse  on  religious  subjects.  .  .  .  The  Bible,  is 
wholly  neglected.  .  .  .  Infidelity  is  very  general  among  the 
higher  classes,  and  in  fact  religion  is  in  a  deplorable  state." 

But  Schiller  says,  "  In  better  natures,  even  poison  be- 
comes wholesome  food."  Surrounded  by  infidelity,  Chan- 
ning  became  a  more  confirmed  believer  in  Christianity,  just 
as,  surrounded  by  the  sensational  philosophy,  he  had  be- 
come a  transcendentalist. 

Returning  from  Virginia  to  Newport,  after  passing  eigh- 
teen months  there  in  study,  he  went  back  to  Cambridge  to 
finish  his  theological  studies.  "There  was  a  time,"  said  he, 
"when  I  verged  toward  Calvinism;  for  illness  and  depres- 
sion gave  me  a  dark  view  of  things.  But  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  held  me  back.  I  followed  Doddridge  through 
his  Rise  and  Progress  till  he  brought  me  to  a  prayer  to 
Christ.  There  I  stopped ;  for  I  was  never,  in  any  sense,  a 
Trinitarian." 

June  I,  1803,  he  was  ordained  over  the  society  which  now 
worships  here,  then  in  Federal  Street.  George  Ticknor, 
who  was  present  as  a  boy  at  his  ordination,  says  that  he  can 
never  forget  the  tone  of  Channing  and  the  intense  feeling 
in  his  voice  in  reading  a  hymn.  From  this  time  till  his 
death,  he  pursued  a  course  of  entire  consecration  to  all  that 
was  highest  and  best.  He  became  the  apostle  of  religion, 
freedom,  humanity,  progress.  A  few  great  ideas  perpetually 
inspired  his  teaching.  Christianity,  as  he  saw  it,  was  sent 
to  make  tJiis  world  full  of  God's  love,  to  make  men  holy  and 
happy  here,  to  redeem  man  from  sin  and  misery  in  this  life. 


94  CHANMNG    CENTENARY. 

The  great  power  to  accomplish  this  he  believed  to  be  faith, 
—  a  strength  of  inspired  conviction, —  faith  in  three  forms  : 
in  God  as  an  infinite  tenderness,  in  Christ  as  manifesting  in 
his  character  perfect  goodness,  in  man  as  capable  of  becom- 
ing, like  Christ,  a  child  of  God.  But  the  essential  condition 
of  this  salvation  was  to  him  freedom, —  freedom  of  thought 
and  action,  liberty  in  full  harmony  with  law. 

As  we  read  that  beautiful  volume  of  Channing's  writings, 
circulated  by  the  Unitarian  Association,  we  are  struck  by 
the  fact  that  all  of  these  ideas,  which  were  at  first  denied 
and  opposed,  are  passing  into  the  thought  and  life  of  Chris- 
tendom. They  have  been  working  a  revolution  in  religious 
thought,  not  the  less  radical  because  so  quiet.  Some  move- 
ments are  like  the  earthquake  or  the  tempest ;  but  this  of 
Channing  was  accomplished  by  the  still,  small  voice  of 
reason.  Yet  what  an  entire  change  is  being  effected 
throughout  all  denominations  by  this  all-penetrating  influ- 
ence .■*  God,  so  long  represented  as  a  stern  judge  and  abso- 
lute monarch,  whose  dreadful  anger  burns  against  sinners 
until  assuaged  by  the  sufferings  of  his  Son,  is  now  seen  as 
the  dear  Father  who  loves  the  bad  and  good  both  ;  loving 
the  wicked  with  an  infinite  compassion,  loving  the  good 
with  an  infinite  sympathy.  Pain  and  evil,  before  regarded 
as  the  punishment  of  sin,  are  now  seen  to  be  divine  bless- 
ings, also  sent  to  cure  our  sicknesses  of  heart  and  thought. 
Death,  long  considered  as  the  king  of  terrors,  is  now  looked 
upon  as  an  angel  of  benign  goodness,  leading  us  to  upper 
worlds  of  rest  and  peace.  The  whole  direction  of  practical 
Christian  teaching  is  reversed :  instead  of  fear,  we  have 
hope  ;  instead  of  mystery,  reason ;  instead  of  blind  submis- 
sion to  irresistible  force,  we  have  willing  and  glad  obedience 
to  what  we  know  to  be  right  and  good. 

I  have  heard  Channing  criticised  as  repeating  himself  too 
much,  as  a  man    of  few  ideas.     He  knew    better   than    to 


< 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON,  95 

scatter  his  fire.  He  concentrated  it  on  the  points  where 
a  breach  was  to  be  made  in  the  walls  of  ancient  custom. 
And  this  is  to  his  credit ;  for  he  was  interested  in  a  vast 
variety  of  subjects,  of  which  his  different  biographers  fur- 
nish us  ample  evidence.  But  his  mind  was  intensely  practi- 
cal, no  less  than  spiritual ;  and  so  he  kept  to  his  point,  and 
elaborated  a  few  all-important  truths  thoroughly. 

These  few  truths  were,  however,  fruitful  in  numerous 
applications  to  social  reforms.  He  delivered  powerful  argu- 
ments in  behalf  of  many  an  unpopular  cause,  helping  it  on 
to  its  ultimate  triumph.  Each  of  his  essays  and  discourses 
on  such  topics  is  a  perfect  crystal, — compact,  transparent, 
sharply  defined.  Each  leaves  a  distinct  impression  of  unan- 
swerable truth.  Such  are  his  writings  in  behalf  of  freedom, 
his  repeated  blows  at  slavery,  eight  of  which  are  in  his  col- 
lected works.  Such,  also,  are  his  admirable  papers  on 
Temperance,  Education,  Self-culture,  the  Elevation  of  the 
Laboring  Classes,  the  Ministry  to  the  Poor,  Peace  and  War. 
Each  of  these  subjects  is  treated  in  an  original  way,  with 
breadth  and  freedom,  with  justice  to  opposite  opinions,  giv- 
ing full  weight  to  all  facts  on  the  other  side.'  Every  one  of 
these  reforms  is  in  the  line  of  human  progress,  all  are  to  be 
accomplished  in  the  future.  The  opinion  of  civilized  man 
is  slowly  but  certainly  setting  in  this  direction.  Dr.  Chan- 
ning  devoted  the  ripest  and  best  years  of  his  life  to  setting 
forth  the  evil  and  sin  of  slavery,  and  declared  his  confident 
belief  that  in  some  way  it  would  come  to  an  end.  It  has 
come  to  an  end,  because  the  excessive  demands  of  the  slave 
power  made  slavery  intolerable.  Channing  set  forth  the  sin 
and  evil  of  war.  War  has  not  ceased,  but  the  excessive  and 
enormous  armaments  of  Europe  have  made  the  burden  al- 
most intolerable ;  and  perhaps  war  may  come  to  an  end  in 
the  same  way.  But  Dr.  Channing  truly  says  that  we  can 
have  no  security  against  international  war,  until  we  have 


96  CHANNTNG    CENTENARY. 

a  Christianity  in  which  Christian  love  shall  overcome  secta- 
rianism and  bigotry, —  a  Christianity  which  shall  make  man 
everywhere  the  object  of  reverence  to  man.  And  toward 
this  conclusion  all  opinion  tends. 

If  we  read  Dr.  Channing's  essay  on  Temperance,  we  shall 
see  that  he  considered  no  outward  arrangements  adequate 
to  cure  this  evil.  He  demands  the  improvement  and  eleva- 
tion of  the  whole  man, —  a  higher  education,  more  sympathy 
between  different  classes,  the  cultivation  among  the  people 
of  a  taste  for  beauty  in  nature  and  art,  by  public  goodness, 
public  music,  innocent  amusements,  in  which  he  includes 
some  form  of  dancing  and  of  the  theatre.  "  Let  us  become 
a  more  cheerful,  and  we  shall  become  a  more  temperate 
people." 

But  all  these  reforms  which  Channing  advocated  grew 
from  the  root  of  one  great  conviction,  his  faith  in  the  worth 
of  the  human  soul.  The  great  evil  which  he  saw  in  slavery, 
war,  ignorance,  intemperance,  was  always  the  same, —  that 
it  degraded  the  human  soul.  This  view  was  eminently  his 
own.  The  sacredness  of  man  had  been  forgotten  by  Chris- 
tian theology  'down  to  the  time  of  Channing.  Christian 
teachers  had  thought  to  exalt  God  by  heaping  contumely 
on  human  nature,  calling  it  utterly  corrupt  and  evil.  They 
wrote  this  reproach  in  every  creed.  To  call  man's  nature 
wholly  depraved  was  thought  to  be  somehow  an  honor  to 
God  and  Christ.  But  Channing  led  the  way  by  the  first 
emphatic  declaration  made  in  modern  times  of  the  dignity 
of  man  in  the  sight  of  God.  And  already,  in  consequence 
of  this,  we  find  it  announced  with  great  authority  that  ortho- 
doxy, when  it  solemnly  declared  man  by  nature  to  be  "ut- 
terly corrupt  and  defiled  in  all  parts  and  faculties  of  soul  and 
body,"  merely  meant  to  say  that  his  moral  symmetry  was 
"  disarranged."  The  influence  of  Dr.  Channing's  teaching 
has  been  so  great  in  this  direction  that  the  orthodox  have 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  9/ 

not  only  deserted  their  old  belief,  but  now  blame  him  for 
having  said  that  they  e\'er  held  it. 

What,  then,  will  be  the  place  of  Channing  in  history  ? 
Doubtless  that  of  a  prophet  who  saw  the  coming  of  the 
great  day,  when  the  barbarities  of  the  old  theologies  should 
pass  away,  when  God  should  be  known  as  the  universal 
Father  and  Friend,  Christ  as  the  human  brother  and  high 
example  of  character  to  all,  and  when,  in  consequence  of  the 
heavenly  hope  of  a  universal  redemption,  all  the  evils  of  this 
lower  world  should  be  gradually  overcome.  Since  the  days 
of  Paul,  no  one  has  so  clearly  seen  as  Channing  saw  the 
approach  of  the  time  when  all  enemies  shall  be  subdued  by 
the  power  of  Christ's  love  and  truth,  and  that  time  still 
farther  on,  when  all  enemies  having  been  subdued  under 
him,  the  Son  also  himself  shall  be  subject  to  Him  who  did 
put  all  things  under  him,  that  God  may  be  all  in  all. 

In  the  last  address  given  by  Channing  before  his  death, 
this  heavenly  vision  of  a  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth  floated 
before  his  eyes. 

"  I  began  this  subject,"  said  he,  "in  hope,  and  in  hope  I 
end.  .  .  .  Mighty  powers  are  at  work  in  the  world,  and  who 
can  stay  them  .-'  A  new  comprehension  of  the  Christian 
spirit,  a  new  reverence  for  humanity,  a  new  feeling  of  broth- 
erhood, and  of  all  men's  relation  to  the  Father, —  these  are 
among  the  signs  of  our  times.  We  see  it.  Do  we  not  feel 
it .''  Before  this,  all  oppressions  are  to  fall.  Society,  silently 
pervaded  by  this,  is  to  change  its  aspect  of  universal  warfare 
for  peace.  The  power  of  all-grasping  selfishness  is  to  yield 
to  this  diviner  energy.  Oh,  come,  thou  kingdom  of  heaven, 
for  which  we  daily  pray  !  Come,  Friend  and  Saviour  of  the 
race,  who  didst  shed  thy  blood  on  the  cross  to  reconcile  man 
to  man,  and  earth  to  heaven  !  Come,  ye  predicted  ages  of 
righteousness  and  love,  for  which  the  faithful  have  so  long 
yearned !      Come,  Father  Almighty,  and  crown  with  thine 

7 


98  ClIANNING    CKNTENARY. 

omnipotence  the  humble  strivings  of  thy  children  to  sub- 
vert oppression  and  wrong,  to  spread  light  and  freedom, 
peace  and  joy,  the  truth  and  spirit  of  thy  Son,  through  the 
whole  earth." 

Amid  such  high  hopes,  the  life  of  Channing  ended  below. 
It  remains  for  us  to-day  to  cherish  his  memory,  not  merely 
by  commemorations,  but  by  doing  our  part  also  to  spread 
that  truth  which  was  so  dear  to  his  heart.  On  this  hun- 
dredth anniversary  of  his  birth,  let  us  resolve  to  be  loyal,  as 
he  was  loyal,  to  the  great  principles  of  spiritual  freedom  and 
human  progress.  And  thus  shall  we  best  remember  him, 
the  moral  of  whose  life  may  be  best  summed  up  in  the 
words,  "  His  eye  was  single,  and  his  whole  body  was  full  of 
light." 

ADDBESS  OF  REV.  DE,  BARTOL, 

We  speak  of  making  occasions.  But  no  newspaper  arti- 
cles, or  lightnings  running  to  and  fro  on  the  wires,  none  of 
our  despatches  or  arrangements,  have  made  this  one.  It  is 
wider  than  this  church,  than  this  city,  or  than  this  country, 
—  even,  like  Channing's  soul,  wide  as  the  world.  It  is  the 
electricity,  and  is  in  the  air.  Yet  what  home  bodies  and 
home-loving  spirits  w^e  are  !  So,  although  his  name  seems 
voiced  to-day  by  the  elements  and  written  visibly  on  the 
sky,  let  me  come  back  from  the  broad  earth,  over  which  his 
spirit  has  travelled,  and  down  from  the  sky,  into  which,  he 
told  me,  out  of  earthly  commotions  he  always  loved  to  look, 
to  congratulate  this  church  and  community  on  their  privilege 
and  advantage  and  honor  in  his  nearly  forty  years'  ministry ; 
and  let  me  speak  here  their  grateful  owning,  before  God,  of 
this  one  ringing  and  resounding  name,  blown  so  far  from 
that  trumpet  of  fame  which  is  an  instrument  no  money  can 
hire,  but  which  some  angel  holds  fast  and  forever  to  his  lips. 

Channing,  more  than  any  other,  more  than  all  others  of 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  99 

his  alike  worthy  comrades  and  compeers,  is  for  mankind  the 
representative  name  of  a  rational  and  liberal  faith.  Be  any- 
other  clerical  contemporary  lesser  or  greater  than  he,  there 
is  something  in  the  old  orthodox  doctrine  of  election  ;  and 
Jie  was  chosen  by  Providence  for  our  spokesman,  beyond  all 
doubt. 

Why  and  how  did  he  become  so  }  What  made  him  the 
plenipotentiary  and  delegate  he  was  t  And  what  was  the 
message  he  delivered,  and  the  burden  he  rolled  off  upon  all 
the  winds,  to  be  carried  so  flaming  and  far  }  The  special 
errand  on  which  he  was  sent  by  the  Holy  Ghost  was  to  pro- 
claim in  the  ear  of  the  race  the  worth  of  the  human  soul, 

"  I  love  a  prophet  of  the  soul," 

writes  our  Emerson  ;  and  so  he  well  loved  him  !  For,  at  a 
time  when  human  nature  in  the  long-prevailing  and  night- 
mare-brooding creeds  was  so  despised  that  it  had  come 
almost  to  despise  itself,  he  reached  forth  his  hand  and  — 
with  what  a  mighty  lift !  —  raised  it  from  the  dust.  We  can 
ill  conceive,  so  long  after  the  thing  was  done,  and  with  the 
now  everywhere  modified  views,  what  a  touch  of  courage^ 
and  power,  what  a  stroke  of  originality,  what  a  demand  from 
the  core  of  his  being,  and  what  a  sublime  inspiration  of  duty 
in  his  breast  it  was  !  He  saw,  as  every  thoughtful  person 
now  sees,  that,  if  the  road  to  God  in  ns  is  blocked,  every 
road  is  blocked  ;  and  no  way  to  him,  through  a  written  reve- 
lation, through  an  ecclesiastical  tradition,  or  even  through 
that  beauty  of  nature  which  is  but  the  echo  or  shadow  of 
mind,  is  really  left.  He  cleared  the  so-long-closed  and 
clogged  inward  track  to  our  Author.  That  was  his  great 
mission  and  achievement  sublime.  He  told  me,  with  much 
tenderness,  that  he  thought  his  view  of  the  dignity  of 
human  nature  did  not  interfere  with  personal  humility. 
How  much  reason  and  how  little  pride  of  reason  he  had  ! 
Indeed,  only  in  the  attitude,  aspect,  and  atmosphere  of  the 


lOO  CITANNINC;    CF.NTKNARY. 

relation  to  Deity,  which  he  tried  to  liberate  and  disclose,  can 
a  genuine  humility  be  born. 

It  is  said  by  some,  who  distrust  Channing's  influence,  that 
his  sway  is  declining,  and  his  thoughts  on  religion  now 
dwarfed  and  dwindling  away.  But,  if  Unitarianism,  as  he  in 
such  unsectarian  wise  preached  it,  is  less  prominent  and 
aggressive  than  of  yore,  it  is  not  by  reason  of  diminution, 
but  by  universal  absorption  of  its  sense,  as  the  sun  and  rain 
are  absorbed.  It  has,  for  sixty  years,  been  working  in  the 
theological  landscape  a  change  how  beneficent  and  immense! 
How  the  once  brown,  almost  black  region  of  dogma  has 
changed  into  green  meadows  indeed,  and  even  the  thorny 
wilderness  of  Calvinism  made  to  blossom  as  the  rose !  Out 
of  that  bloom  should  come  no  curse  or  reproach,  but  only 
warm  acknowledgments  of  gratitude  to  those,  like  Chan- 
ning,  who  have  wrought  a  difference  so  vast,  so  evident,  and 
so  benign. 

I  know  how  stoutly  many  of  the  orthodox  preachers  of  our 
day  declare  that  the  w^hole  idea  of  any  departure  from  the 
ancient  symbols  and  standards  is  a  slander  or  a  mistake. 
But,  lo !  my  friends,  am  not  I  a  living  witness  of  the  fact  to 
which  I  refer  ?  I  was  born  and  bred  in  the  old  gloomy  New 
England  belief.  I  hung  my  head,  day  after  day,  and  for 
hours  at  a  time,  in  my  boyhood,  before  a  revengeful  God, 
like  an  iron  pillar ;  with  hopeless  prayers,  a  hundred  times 
repeated  that  /le  would  be  merciful  to  me  a  sinner,  before  I 
knew  of  any  sin  that  lay  at  my  door !  I  thought  him  cruel 
and  hard  ;  and  when  women  fainted  in  the  hot  and  ill-venti- 
lated church,  and  were  borne  out  on  the  shoulders  of  men, 
I  supposed  they  were  summoned  to  the  dreadful  judgment 
that  had  just  been  held  forth  from  the  desk.  How  heavy 
and  corrupt  was  the  religious  as  well  as  the  natural  air ! 

I  look  daily  out  of  my  window  at  the  spot  in  Boston  where 
Channing  lived.     The  large  elm-tree  at  his  threshold,  lofty 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  lOI 

and  lowly,  with  its  massive  trunk  and  its  drooping  branches, 
as  he  was  lofty  and  lowly,  though  with  some  of  its  limbs 
lopped  off,  still  overshadows  his,  to  me,  so  familiar  roof. 
Does  the  house  stand,  and  does  the  tree  renew  its  verdure, 
and  is  he  gone  to  be  extant  no  more  ?  He  is  present  and 
alive,  at  least  to  me.  I  feel  moved  sometimes  to  go  and  ring 
the  bell,  if  I  might  venture  to  ask  leave  of  those  who  occupy 
the  mansion  now  to  enter  the  room  where  he,  the  friend  and 
saint,  sat  and  studied  and  talked.  Best  of  listeners  as  the 
eloquent  man  was,  he  also  hearkened  till  the  silence  was 
almost  painful  to  the  guest,  scarce  ready,  though  so  earnestly 
invited  and  entreated,  to  speak  on  the  subject  in  hand. 
Does  the  tree  then  survive,  and  has  he  deceased.-*  I  know 
not  Jiow  in  form  and  circumstance  he  is.  But  I  question  not 
that  he  is,  and  is  here,  even  as  is  the  Master  whose  table  is 
spread  at  this  shrine  with  the  emblems  of  the  transcendent 
love  and  sacrifice.  He  is  where  he  lives  and  works,  and 
loves  and  leads.  Does  the  tree  that,  like  all  nature,  was  so 
dear  to  his  eyes,  outlive  himself.''  I  have  no  such  idea  of 
the  longevity  of  a  tree.  I  have  an  idea,  which  none  has 
done  more  than  he  to  brighten  and  keep  fresh,  of  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul.  The  tree  is  maimed,  and  predicts,  in 
every  limb,  its  own  fall  and  destruction.  He  prophesied,  in 
every  faculty  and  affection,  which  were  more  youthful  and 
vigorous  in  him  the  longer  he  lived,  that  human  nature  in 
such  an  unfolding,  however  it  may  be  evolved  and  trans- 
formed angelically,  can  never  die.  The  human  soul,  so  long 
a  minor,  in  Channing  came  to  its  majority.  That  is  his 
crown. 

After  the  benediction,  many  of  the  congregation  passed 
into  the  vestry,  at  the  invitation  of  Mr.  Ware,  to  take  a  look 
at  the  old  Federal  Street  pulpit,  which  is  there  preserved. 


102  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 


PULPIT  TRIBUTES. 


DE.  OHANNING  A  MAN  OF  AFPAIES. 

From  a  Sermon  preached  in  the  South  Congregational  Church,  April  ii. 
By  Kev,  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE,  D.D. 

.  .  .  Not  attempting  myself  to  say  a  word  more  as  to  the 
measure  of  his  moral  greatness,  I  ask  your  attention  to  a 
single  form  of  his  work,  which  has,  naturally  enough,  been 
neglected  in  the  efforts  to  state  succinctly  the  principle _ 
beneath  it  all.  The  men  who  remember  him  now,  forty 
years  after  his  death,  are,  of  course,  men  who  remember 
him  in  the  time  which  covers  the  close  of  his  life,  as  an 
invalid  recluse,  not  often  appearing  in  society,  excepting  as 
a  preacher  or  a  lecturer  appears.  It  is  almost  taken  for 
granted  that  he  was  not  a  man  of  affairs  or  of  practice. 
But  the  truth  is  that  in  his  college  days,  as  appears  from  the 
places  he  held  in  the  college  societies  and  from  the  remem- 
brances of  his  friends,  he  was  accounted  a  man  of  business, 
to  be  intrusted  with  practical  commissions.  When  he  left 
college,  they  all  supposed  that  he  was  to  follow  the  law, —  a 
profession  then,  as  now,  exacting  skill  in  business  as  well  as 
quick  knowledge  of  men.  When,  at  twenty-two  years  of 
age,  he  took  the  charge  of  the  Federal  Street  Church,  he 


1 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  IO3 

regarded  the  pastoral  charge,  the  personal  intimacy  not  only 
with  his  parishioners,  but  with  the  poor  of  the  town,  as  the 
most  important  part  of  his  duty.  He  declined  a  call  to 
Brattle  Street,  because  that  congregation  was  larger,  and  he 
doubted  whether  he  could  meet  the  demands  made  on  his 
strength.  He  accepted  a  call  to  Federal  Street,  because 
that  congregation  was  smaller.  But  this  choice  was,  you 
see,  not  because  he  meant  to  neglect  these  practical  duties, 
but  because  he  did  not.  Had  he  meant  to  be  the  studious 
recluse,  appearing  in  public  only  as  a  speaker,  which  he  is 
now  represented,  and  which,  in  the  bud  of  his  life,  he  be- 
came, he  would  have  chosen  the  larger  congregation  and  not 
the  smaller.  In  point  of  fact,  from  the  moment  of  his  ordi- 
nation, he  attacked  the  practical  duty  of  a  man  who  means 
to  fight  the  devil  on  all  his  lines  of  approach,  and  to  trample 
out  sin  wherever  he  finds  it.  He  rejected  that  fallacy  which 
supposes  that  a  church  is  a  private  club  for  the  mutual  in- 
surance of  the  members,  but  that  they  may  be  indifferent  to 
the  needs  of  others.  He  recognized  the  truth  that  he  was 
one  of  twelve  or  fifteen  ministers  to  the  town,  to  whom 
were  intrusted  the  moral  affairs  of  the  town  —  even  of  the 
lowest  harlot  and  of  the  meanest  publican  —  as  they  were 
not  intrusted  to  men  in  other  duties.  To  the  cares  of 
uplifting  the  moral  life  of  the  town,  he  addressed  himself. 
For  fifteen  years,  as  I  suppose,  no  man  in  the  town  was 
more  active  in  such  work,  even  in  its  details. 

To  understand  the  way  in  which  he  addressed  himself 
to  it,  remember  what  the  town  was.  It  was  a  little  seaport 
of  some  twenty-six  thousand  people,  all  told.  It  was  not  a 
place  so  large  as  Springfield  is  to-day.  It  more  resembled 
the  Gloucester  of  to-day.  In  the  years  which  soon  followed 
his  settlement,  its  foreign  commerce,  on  which  it  largely 
depended,  was  almost  ruined  by  Jefferson's  embargo,  under 
the  empire  of  which  grass  grew  in  State  Street  and  on  Long 


I04  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Wharf.  That  was  a  period  in  its  history  not  unlike  what  it 
went  through  under  the  Boston  Port  Bill,  when  George  III. 
tried  the  same  experiment.  Probably,  in  those  first  years 
of  Channing's  ministry,  Boston  suffered  more  from  the  pov- 
erty of  her  people  than  she  has  suffered  at  any  other  period 
in  the  last  century.  To  care  for  the  poor  in  such  a  condi- 
tion of  things,  to  reform  criminals,  particularly  criminal 
boys,  to  meet  the  dangers  and  difficulties  which  followed 
in  a  state  of  war,  were  all  practical  matters  to  which  Chan- 
ning  addressed  himself;  just  as  Dr.  Tuckerman  did  after- 
wards, or  Mr.  Charles  Barnard,  whom  Channing  trained  to 
such  work,  or  as  Mr.  Winkley  does  to-day.  In  this  time,  the 
school  committee  took  new  activity;  and  I  think  that  for  one 
or  two  years  Dr.  Channing  acted  as  the  chairman. 

To  speak  of  a  significant  detail,  we  say  that  in  the  cus- 
toms of  our  time  church  parlors  and  rooms  for  week-day 
meetings  are  necessary  for  the  practical  work  of  a  church. 
We  want  a  vestry  building  ourselves  for  such  purposes. 
There  is  a  letter  of  Dr.  Channing's,  written  in  1817,  to  the 
standing  committee  of  his  church,  where  he  proposes  such 
a  building,  and  shows  how  it  was  to  be  used.  He  gives  six 
uses  to  which  it  would  be  applied.  Among  other  things,  it 
was  to  have  a  church  library,  and  he  was  to  be  the  librarian ; 
so  that,  giving  out  the  books  and  receiving  them,  he  could 
become  better  acquainted  with  the  young  people  personally, 
and  direct  or  advise  their  reading  and  their  lives.  That  is 
no  plan  of  a  recluse  orator. 

To  take  another  instance,  which  shows  his  habit  even 
later.  We  think  there  is  nothing  more  characteristic  of  our 
time  than  the  modern  review,  in  which  the  gravest  theology 
is  discussed  in  articles  side  by  side  with  the  latest  literature 
or  the  most  critical  discovery.  But  such  is  exactly  the  plan 
of  the  Christian  Examiner,  formed  at  a  meeting  called  in 
Dr.  Channing's  study  by  himself.     His  name  heads  the  list 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  IO5 

of  members  of  the  association  formed  to  carry  it  on,  followed 
immediately  by  that  of  Prof.  John  Farrar,  the  physicist,  and 
that  of  Andrews  Norton,  the  critic.  It  is  not  in  the  least  a 
company  of  divines.  There  are  merchants,  engineers,  physi- 
cians, in  the  society.  Among  early  subjects  prepared  are: 
"Our  National  Union,"  to  be  discussed  by  Dr.  Channing ; 
"Lyceums,"  then  in  their  infancy,  by  Dr.  Dewey;  "Rail- 
roads," to  be  treated  by  my  father ;  and  "  Catholic  Emanci- 
pation," by  James  T.  Austin.  The  two  subjects  taken  by 
Dr.  Channing  in  early  numbers  were  "  American  Litera- 
ture"  and  the  "American  Union." 

I  think  it  would  be  found  that  the  first  copies  of  the 
European  treatises  on  practical  education,  on  the  reform 
of  schools,  poorhouses,  and  prisons,  received  in  America, 
were  the  copies  received  by  Dr.  Channing  from  his  corre- 
spondents in  Europe.  The  interest  which  he  took  in  Fell- 
enberg's  school  at  Hofwyl,  in  the  Baron  Degerando's  publi- 
cations on  social  science,  resulted  in  the  wide  extension  of 
the  knowledge  of  these  men  in  this  country ;  and  I  suppose 
we  should  iind  that  the  speculations  of  Fourier  and  of 
Robert  Owen  were  carefully  studied  by  Channing  and  his 
friends  before  they  were  studied  in  any  other  part  of 
America. 

As  I  have  said,  I  suppose  that  in  the  first  fifteen  years  of 
his  ministry  he  was  as  largely  engaged  in  the  practical  move- 
ment of  the  town  in  which  a  young  man  would  gladly  take  a 
share  as  any  man  in  it.  I  think  it  was  in  1814  that  he  was 
engaged  actively  in  the  school  committee,  in  a  movement  for 
the  regulation  of  the  Latin  School.  By  that  time,  the  popu- 
lation of  the  little  town  had  increased  to  thirty-five  thousand. 
We  find  it  difficult  to  imagine  such  a  Boston, —  a  town  of  gar- 
dens and  orchards,  a  town  of  which  it  is  said,  with  some  pride, 
that  there  were  in  181 1  nine  brick  blocks  of  buildings  and 
one  of  stone,  a  town  suffering  severely  under  the  pressure 


I06  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

of  the  war  and  the  events  which  led  to  it.  But  I  believe  no 
adequate  estimate  of  the  habit  of  Channing's  work  will  be 
made,  unless  we  bear  in  mind  what  that  town  was  and  what 
its  aspirations  were.  Those  people  were  not  many,  but  they 
were  proud.  The  same  spirit  which  defied  George  III. 
was  in  them  ;  and  I  hope  it  may  always  be  in  them.  They 
were  used  to  seeing  in  the  old  books  and  on  the  old  maps 
that  Boston  was  the  "  metropolis  of  America,"  and  they 
meant  it  should  be.  They  laid  out  their  public  institutions 
on  a  scale  not  for  a  little  provincial  fishing-town,  but  for 
a  metropolis,  indeed.  Remember  their  numbers,  and  think 
what  it  was  to  build  the  Massachusetts  Hospital,  to  establish 
on  a  generous  scale  the  American  Academy  and  the  Histor- 
ical Society,  the  Charitable  Mechanic  Association,  the  Bos- 
ton Library,  and  the  Athenaeum,  the  asylums  for  orphan 
boys  and  orphan  girls,  to  develop  the  public  schools  by  the 
addition  of  the  high  schools,  which  are  a  pure  Boston  inven- 
tion, to  raise  the  college  from  an  "academy"  to  a  university, 
and  to  erect  and  organize  the  new  houses  of  industry  and 
reformation  and  like  institutions.  Imagine  any  town  you 
know  of  those  numbers,  even  with  the  much  larger  wealth 
of  to-day,  undertaking  such  enterprises  in  the  course  of 
fifteen  years.  They  had  a  genius  for  public  spirit  :  they 
liked  to  turn  their  thought  that  way,  and  to  spend  their 
money  that  way. 

In  such  a  community  of  whom  every  leader  was  in  his 
way  an  idealist,  such  men  as  Channing  and  Murray  —  ideal- 
ists eager  to  see  the  world  made  over  —  found  their  fit  wel- 
come. The  old  phrase  that  Boston  was  the  "  paradise  of 
ministers  "  was  not  a  mere  joke.  Such  men  were  able  to 
try  their  practical  experiments  here  as  Calvin  tried  his  in 
Geneva,  under  circumstances  not  dissimilar.  I  wish  I  might 
dwell,  in  some  detail,  on  the  results.  Without  trying  to  do 
that,   I  will   say  that   the  work  of  the  group  of  men  who 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  10/ 

surrounded  Channing  in  those  years  frequently  shows  au- 
dacity such  as  I  remember  nowhere  else  in  men's  conflict 
with  the  errors  and  vices  of  society.  You  can  compare  it 
with  nothing  but  Prescott's  audacity  in  throwing  up  his 
redoubt  on  the  hill  yonder  within  the  range  of  the  English 
guns.  The  Church,  in  its  various  enterprises  of  reform,  as 
those  men  speak  of  them,  proposes,  not  simply  to  reduce 
the  amount  of  vice  and  pauperism,  but  to  trample  out  those 
diseases.  Just  as  three  years  ago,  by  vigorous  measures, 
your  Board  of  Health  reduced  the  deaths  by  small- pox  here 
from  hundreds  to  one  solitary  case,  where  a  poor  stranger 
died,  so  these  men  expected  to  reduce  pauperism  to  be  the 
accident  of  exile.  When  Dr.  Channing  and  his  friends  es- 
tablished their  society  for  this  purpose,  they  did  not  call  it 
a  society  for  the  "  Relief  of  Pauperism  "  or  the  "Diminution 
of  Pauperism"  :  they  called  it  a  society  for  the  "  Prevention 
of  Pauperism."  When  they  established  the  "  Ministry  at 
Large,"  they  meant  that  every  man,  woman,  and  child  in 
Boston  should  be  sure  of  the  counsel  and  help  of  a  sympa- 
thizing Christian  friend.  And  that  illustration  shows  their 
habit  all  along.  You  will  find  in  their  speeches,  in  their 
reports,  in  their  private  letters,  that  they  really  mean  to 
make  this  little  town  to  be  a  "city  of  God,"  in  which  the 
vices  and  the  crimes  which  have  stained  city  life  in  other 
countries  shall  be  unknown.  Well,  there  has  been  no  lack 
of  such  enthusiasts  in  other  places ;  but  the  peculiarity  here 
was  that  for  a  long  term  of  years  these  enthusiasts  virtually 
led  the  town  in  their  plans.  The  rich  men  and  its  political 
leaders  were  as  much  interested  in  such  schemes  as  they 
were.  They  supplied  the  means,  they  brought  out  the  detail, 
and  they  gave  their  personal  supervision  in  that  happy  exer- 
cise of  public  spirit  which  shows  itself  in  like  work  at  this 
day.  So  soon  as  an  evil  was  observed  in  social  order,  the 
measures  prepared  were  measures  large  enough  to  meet  it 


I08  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

in  full.  Were  there  orphans,  the  orphan  asylums  were  made 
large  enough  for  them  all.  Were  there  children,  the  schools 
were  made  large  enough  for  all.  The  Massachusetts  Hos- 
pital was  to  be  built  large  enough  for  all  who  needed  it  in 
Massachusetts  and  in  the  province  of  Maine.  Nobody  seems 
to  have  thought  of  leaving  this  or  that  detail  to  this  or  that 
side  direction.  If  they  acted  at  all,  they  acted  for  the  whole. 
You  see  they  were  bound  to  such  a  course,  in  mere  decency 
or  consistency.  "Perfectibility  of  human  nature,"  —  who 
had  a  right  to  talk  of  perfectibility  of  human  nature,  when 
boys  and  girls,  men  and  women,  were  sent  every  day  to  the 
House  of  Correction  not  perfected .-'  Every  word  that  they 
said  of  the  divinity  of  man  and  of  his  oneness  with  God 
compelled  them  to  show  that  the  meanest  could  be  lifted  up 
so  that  they  could  stand,  and  that  this  ideal  gospel  of  glad 
tidings  should  be  proclaimed  to  all  who  were  in  need,  not  by 
the  voice  only,  but  in  the  practical  efforts  of  human  love. 

It  is  the  feeling  that  they  can  try  their  experiments  of 
reform  at  once,  in  their  own  town  and  State,  which  gives  a 
definiteness  to  those  statements  which  such  schemes  are  apt 
to  lack.  Indeed,  when  John  Lowell  or  Colonel  Perkins  or 
Charles  Jackson  or  Jonathan  Phillips  or  Josiah  Ouincy  drew 
up  a  scheme  or  made  a  statement,  there  was  no  more  reason 
why  it  should  lack  definiteness  than  if  it  had  been  a  State 
paper  or  an  account  of  trust.  The  action  and  reaction  be- 
tween the  thinkers  and  the  actors  in  such  a  community  has 
a  very  great  interest,  and  it  should  not  be  forgotten  in  read- 
ing the  expression  which  the  time  made  in  literature.  "We 
governed  the  Commonwealth,"  said  one  of  the  youngest  of 
those  men  to  me  thirty  years  ago,  "  and  they  let  us  govern 
it  because  we  governed  it  so  well." 

I  need  not  say  that  this  set  of  conditions  has  been  largely 
changed.  It  was  changed  to  the  very  foundation  by  the 
settlement  in  Boston  of  a  population  wholly  outnumbering 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  IO9 

the  natives, —  a  population  of  alien  descent,  of  alien  tradi- 
tions, and  an  alien  religion, —  jealous  of  interference  from 
those  it  found  here,  and  resenting  the  moral  influences 
which,  in  the  days  of  a  homogeneous  race,  could  be  extended 
alike  over  each  and  all.  I  know  that  if  Dr.  Channing  were 
living  here  now  he  would  still  speak  of  the  "divinity  of 
human  nature"  and  the  "possible  perfection  of  human 
society."  But  he  would  speak  of  each  in  different  phrases 
from  what  he  did  use,  and  he  would  not  speak  with  that 
certainty  of  speedy  abolishment  of  this  evil  or  that  evil 
which  you  find  once  and  again  in  his  letters  and  addresses. 
In  his  early  days,  this  whole  town  was  opened  to  the 
appeals,  nay,  welcomed  the  advice  and  help,  of  those  moral 
leaders  to  which,  by  tradition  and  history,  was  intrusted  the 
guidance  of  this  town.  In  our  days,  three-fifths  of  the  people 
distrust  those  appeals,  and,  so  far  as  they  look  anywhere  for 
moral  guidance,  find  it  in  the  directions  of  the  servants  of  a 
foreign  prince,  themselves  unused  to  our  civilization,  igno- 
rant of  its  history,  and  indifferent  as  to  its  plan.  It  is  in 
such  a  change  that  a  certain  chill  comes  over  us  who  read 
the  prophecies  of  the  idealists,  as  they  made  them  sixty 
years  ago.  If  we  think  they  spoke  too  hopefully,  it  is 
because  we  are  living  in  other  conditions,  wholly  changed 
from  those  which  were  around  them. 

Let  us  of  to-day,  however,  not  be  paralyzed  nor  discour- 
aged. When  we  find  the  real  secret  of  the  power  of  Chan- 
ning, we  find  it  not  in  the  conditions  of  his  life,  not  in  the 
methods  of  his  intellectual  process,  not  in  such  superficial 
accidents  as  the  sweetness  of  his  voice  or  the  correctness  of 
his  style  or  the  books  that  he  read  or  the  philosophy  which 
he  devised.  The  secret  is  the  open  secret  of  nearness  to 
God  —  "Nearer,  my  God,  to  thee!"  This  was  the  struggle 
of  those  days  of  his  early  manhood,  to  read  which  is  to  read 
the  agonies  of  a  Greek  tragedy, —  to  seek  God,  to  find  God. 


no  CnAWlNG    CENTENARY. 

This  is  the  success  of  his  life,  and  then  to  do  his  Father's 
work,  whatever  that  work  might  be.  Did  God  choose  to 
have  a  school  system  amended,  "  Here  am  I  :  send  me." 
Or  did  God  choose  that  a  house  of  industry  should  be  organ- 
ized, "  Here  am  I  :  send  me."  Or  is  it  that  a  hundred 
idols,  reared  in  dark  ages  of  theology,  shall  be  insulted  and 
hurled  from  their  pedestals,  "  Here  am  I  :  send  me."  Or 
is  it  that  the  absolute  statement  of  right  shall  be  made  in 
the  matter  of  human  slavery,  "  Here  am  I  :  send  me." 
Brethren,  we  do  not  want  to  look  on  all  this  as  if  it  were  a 
thing  of  the  past.  We  do  not  want  to  talk  of  this  prophet 
as  we  might  talk  of  Orpheus  or  of  Amos,  prophets  to  other 
ages,  whose  work  is  now  a  curiosity  of  history.  It  is  a 
prophet  of  our  own  time  whom  we  consider.  It  is  for  the 
work  of  our  own  future  that  we  consider  him.  We  will  look 
forward  and  not  back.  Looking  forwa,rd,  it  is  that  I  beg 
you,  young  men  and  young  women  who  are  of  this  genera- 
tion now  stepping  upon  the  scene,  to  work  in  the  spirit  in 
which  your  fathers  worked.  Make  large  plans,  nor  be  satis- 
fied with  small.  Look  square  in  the  face  the  whole  duty, 
and  trust  in  the  infinite  Ally.  The  ignorance  of  those 
around  you,  —  their  intemperance,  their  selfishness,  their 
dirt,  their  disease,  their  sin,  these  are  great  evils,  very 
great ;  but  the  precise  business  for  which  you  are  sent  into 
the  world  —  children  of  God,  God's  sons  and  daughters — is 
that  you  shall  meet  great  evils  and  tread  them  down.  It  is 
not  to  a  small  work  that  a  "prince  of  the  blood  royal"  is 
commissioned.  It  is  not  to  a  small  work  that  he  conde- 
scends. In  all  this  noble  eulogium  to  a  great  leader  of  men, 
there  is  no  blessing,  there  is  no  good,  unless  you  who  are 
of  to-day  and  of  to-morrow  are  willing  to  take  larger  work 
upon  your  shoulders,  as  God  has  given  to  you  a  larger  field 
and  larger  power, —  that  so  his  kingdom  may  come  and  his 
will  may  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven. 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  Ill 

OHANNING  UNITAEIANISM. 

From  a  Sermon  preached  in  the  Church  of  the  Unity,  April  4. 
By  Rev.  MINOT  J,  SAVAGE, 

.  .  .  So,  in  these  modern  days,  there  has  sprung  up,  it  seems 
to  me,  this  growth  of  sentimental  admiration  for  Channing, 
going  along  with  an  utter  misconception  of  his  real  spirit  and 
life ;  so  that  the  men  who  claim  to  be  governed  by  his  prin- 
ciples, and  assume  to  themselves  the  honor  of  his  name,  are 
the  very  ones  who  never  think,  to-day,  of  saying  and  doing 
the  things,  the  like  of  which  Channing  said  and  did  in  his 
own  time.  There  has  come  to  be  talk  of  the  "  Channing 
school  "  of  Unitarianism.  There  are  those  who  claim  to 
represent  what  they  think  to  be  the  Unitarian  ideal  which 
Channing  represented  and  outlined  ;  those  who  deprecate 
the  advocacy  of  any  doctrines  not  to  be  found  in  Channing's 
works,  or  in  their  interpretation  of  his  works  ;  those  who 
would  not  go  one  step  further  than  Channing  went  in  his 
own  lifetime.  Channing  Unitarianism  has  been  used  in 
these  later  years  to  stop  the  mouths  of  earnest,  strong- 
thinking  young  men,  has  been  used  as  a  chain  to  bind  their 
freedom,  has  been  used  as  though  it  were  the  watchword  of 
a  petty  little  sect  created  to  perpetuate  the  peculiar  ideas 
that  Channing  is  supposed  to  have  held.  Men  and  women 
say,  "  I  can't  bear  such  radical  preaching,"  or  "  I  can't  abide 
science  in  the  pulpit,"  or  "I  wish  people  knew  when  to 
stop,"  for  —  "I'm  a  Channing  Unitarian.-"  I  wish,  then, 
this  morning  to  raise  the  question  as  to  what  Channing 
Unitarianism  means,  what  it  has  been  in  the  past,  and  what 
we  may  regard  as  its  probable  outlook  in  the  future. 

Channing  Unitarianism,  in  the  sense  in  which  those 
words  are  used,  implies  three  things  which  I  wish  just  to 
refer  to.     It  implies  in  the  first  place  the  creation  of  a  little 


I  [2  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Unitarian  sect.  Of  cour.sc,  it  means  nothing,  unless  that 
there  arc  certain  churches  and  certain  people  that  are 
"  Channing "  in  their  doctrines,  in  distinction  from  other 
people  and  other  churches  which  are  not.  It  means,  fur- 
ther, the  establishment  of  a  creed.  It  makes  no  difference 
that  the  creed  is  not  written  or  printed,  because,  if  one  is 
to  be  a  Channing  Unitarian  in  distinction  from  any  other 
kind,  it  must  be  by  holding  certain  beliefs  which  Channing 
is  supposed  to  have  held  and  advocated ;  and  these,  of 
course,  will  constitute  a  creed.  It  implies  still  one  more 
thing ;  and  that  is  the  supposition  that  Channing  believed 
that  there  had  been  a  completed  revelation  of  divine  truth 
from  which  this  finished  and  perfected  creed  could  be 
drawn.  Now,  I  wish  not  to  weary  you;  but  I  must  read 
a  few  extracts  that  I  have  culled  from  Channing's  works, 
to  illustrate  the  positions  which  he  really  held  on  these 
points.  Here  is  something  that  he  says  concerning  sectari- 
anism :  — 

A  sect  skilfully  organized,  trained  to  utter  one  cry,  combined  to  cover 
with  reproach  whoever  may  differ  from  themselves,  to  drown  the  free 
expression  of  opinion  by  denunciations  of  heresy, —  such  a  sect  is  as 
perilous  and  palsying  to  the  intellect  as  the  Inquisition. 

And,  of  his  own  position  in  regard  to  sectarianism,  he 
says  :  — 

I  have  no  anxiety  to  wear  the  livery  of  any  party.  I  indeed  take 
cheerfully  the  name  of  a  Unitarian,  because  unwearied  efforts  are  used 
to  raise  against  it  a  popular  cry.  Were  the  name  more  honored,  I 
should  be  glad  to  throw  it  off;  for  I  fear  the  shackles  which  a  party 
connection  imposes.  I  desire  to  escape  the  narrow  walls  of  a  particular 
church,  hearing  with  my  own  ears  and  following  Truth  meekly  but  reso- 
lutely, however  arduous  or  solitary  be  the  path  in  which  she  leads. 

Again  :  — 

Christian  truth  is  infinite.  Who  can  think  of  shutting  it  up  in  a  few 
lines  of  an  abstract  creed  ?     Christianity  is  freer,  more  illimitable  than 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  II3 

the  light  or  the  winds.  From  the  infinity  of  Christian  truth  of  which 
I  have  spoken,  it  follows  that  our  views  of  it  must  always  be  very  imper- 
fect, and  ought  to  be  continually  enlarged.  Every  new  gleam  of  light 
should  be  welcomed  with  joy.  Better  for  the  minister  to  preach  in  barns 
or  the  open  air,  where  he  may  speak  the  truth  from  the  fulness  of  his 
soul,  than  to  lift  up  in  cathedrals,  amidst  pomp  and  wealth,  a  voice  which 
is  not  true  to  his  inward  thoughts. 

And  in  his  address  in  dedicating  Divinity  Hall  at  Cam- 
bridge :  — 

To  train  the  student  to  power  of  thought  and  utterance,  let  him  be 
left,  and,  still  more  encouraged,  to  free  investigation.  .  .  .  Teach  the 
young  man  .  .  .  that  he  has  a  divine  intellect  for  which  he  is  to  answer 
to  God,  and  that  to  surrender  it  to  another  is  to  cast  the  crown  from  his 
head  and  to  yield  up  his  noblest  birthright.  .  .  .  Guard  him  against 
tampering  with  his  own  mind,  against  silencing  its  whispers  and  objec- 
tions that  he  may  enjoy  a  favorite  opinion  undisturbed.  Do  not  give 
him  the  shadow  for  the  substance  of  freedom  by  telling  him  to  inquire, 
but  prescribing  to  him  the  convictions  at  which  he  must  stop.  Better 
show  him  honestly  his  chains  than  mock  the  slave  with  the  show  of 
liberty. 

We  must  never  forget  that  free  rational  thought  is  the  greatest  gift  of 
God. 

To  free  inquiry  then  [still  from  the  address  in  dedicating  Divinity 
Hall],  to  free  inquiry  then,  we  dedicate  these  walls.  We  invite  into 
them  the  ingenuous  young  man,  who  prizes  liberty  of  mind  more  than 
aught  within  the  gift  of  sects  or  of  the  world.  Let  heaven's  free  air 
circulate,  and  heaven's  unobstructed  light  shine  here  ;  and  let  those  who 
shall  be  sent  hence  go  forth,  not  to  echo  with  servility  a  creed  imposed 
on  their  weakness,  but  to  utter,  in  their  own  manly  tones,  what  their  own 
free  investigation  and  deep  conviction  urge  them  to  preach  as  the  truth 
of  God. 

And  once  more  :  — 

I  must  choose  to  receive  the  truth,  no  matter  how  it  bears  upon  my- 
self, must  follow  it,  no  matter  where  it  leads,  from  what  party  it  severs 
me,  or  to  what  party  it  allies. 

And  then  again,  for  the  consideration  of  those  who  think 


114  CHANNING    CKNTENARY. 

that  Channing  himself  thought  that  he  had  attained  ultimate 
truth  :  — 

I  apprehend  there  is  but  one  way  of  putting  an  end  to  our  present 
dissensions  ;  and  that  is  not  the  triumph  of  any  existing  system  over  all 
others,  but  the  acquisition  of  something  better  than  the  best  we  now 
have. 

And  his  definition  of  freedom  :  — 

I  call  that  mind  free  which  jealously  guards  its  intellectual  rights  and 
powers,  which  calls  no  man  master,  which  does  not  content  itself  with 
a  passive  or  hereditary  faith,  which  opens  itself  to  light  whencesoever  it 
may  come,  which  receives  new  truth  as  an  angel  from  heaven. 

Towards  the  last  of  his  life,  when  he  had  almost  retired 
from  the  ministry,  he  wrote  :  — 

As  I  grow  older,  I  grieve  more  and  more  at  the  impositions  on  the 
human  mind  ;  at  the  machinery  by  which  the  few  keep  down  the  many. 
I  distrust  sectarian  influences  more  and  more.  I  am  more  detached 
from  a  denomination,  and  strive  to  feel  more  my  connection  with  the 
universal  Church, 

Which  he  defines  as  "all  good  and  holy  men." 
I  must  read  you  one  more  passage.     James  Martineau,  of 
London,  a  few  years  ago,  during  the  last  of  Channing's  life, 
was   regarded    as    dangerously  radical    by  his  friends  ;   and 
Channing  writes  to  him  :  — 

Old  Unitarianism  must  vmdergo  important  modifications  or  develop- 
ment. It  began  as  a  protest  against  the  rejection  of  reason,  against 
mental  slavery.  It  pledged  itself  —  [To  what.''  To  the  creation  of  a 
little  sect  called  Channing  Unitarianism?]  —  it  pledged  itself  to  progress 
as  its  life  and  end ;  but  it  has  gradually  grown  stationary,  and  now  we 
have  a  Unitaj'ian  Orthodoxy. 

That  is  Channing's  own  utterance.  And  it  is  well  known, 
to  those  who  are  familiar  with  the  history  of  that  time,  how 
Channing  was  one  of  the  few  men  that  held  out  his  hand  in 
sympathy  to  the  young,  impulsive,  and  outlawed  Theodore 
Parker.     And  one  of  the  famous  sayings  of  his  life,  which 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  II5 

rings  out  in  tones  worthy  of  the  war-cry  of  an  immortal,  was, 
"  Always  young  for  liberty !  " 

I  had  in  mind  some  other  passages  that  I  had  thought  to 
read  to  you,  illustrating  and  emphasizing  these  same  points ; 
but  I  must  pass  them  over,  for  lack  of  time.  Now  let  us  for 
a  moment  glance  at  the  outline  of  his  life,  to  see  how  this 
Ipears  upon  the  question  as  to  where  he  really  stood  as  a 
theologian. 

When  he  became  a  young  man  and  first  began  to  preach, 
Channing  stood  very  near  what  we  should  call  liberal  Ortho- 
doxy to-day.  He  progressed  from  that  to  Arianism  :  that  is, 
—  to  give  you  its  definition  in  a  word, —  the  doctrine  taught 
by  Arius  concerning  the  person  of  Christ  :  that  Jesus  was 
a  supernatural  being,  but  not  equal  to  God ;  that  he  had 
lived  in  a  pre-existent  state,  and  had  come  into  this  world 
with  a  special  mission  from  the  Father  to  save  and  lift  up 
the  human  race.  He  went  on  from  this  to  his  old  age, 
and  broadened  more  and  more,  until  at  the  last,  as  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Brooks,  his  biographer,  tells  us,  he  was  a  broad-hearted 
humanitarian.  His  nephew,  W.  H.  Channing,  of  London, 
the  one  who  has  written  his  biography,  tells  us  the  same. 
And  last  fall  I  had  the  privilege  of  conversing  with  Dr. 
Channing's  son,  who  is  now  residing  in  Providence;  and  I 
asked  him  the  plain  question,  "  What  did  your  father  believe 
at  the  last .'  What  was  his  theological  attitude.''"  And  he 
told  me  that  he  broadened  more  and  more  to  the  last  day 
of  his  life,  and  died  a  simple  humanitarian.  This  does  not 
deny  that  he  held  this  special  belief  or  that,  but  rather 
refers  to  his  spirit  and  sympathy.  And  it  is  a  little  signifi- 
cant, as  showing  at  least  the  influences  that  were  around 
these  boys,  to  see  that  both  Dr.  Channing's  son  and  the  son 
of  Dr.  Gannett,  his  long-time  colleague,  are  utterly  free  and 
universal  to-day,  in  their  theological  views. 


Il6  CHANNINfi    CKNII'.NAKA' 


And  Dr.  Bellows  has  said 


If  anything  would  move  Channing's  spirit  to  indignation  in  his  heav- 
enly state,  and  make  his  bones  stir  in  their  resting-place,  it  would  be  the 
knowledge  that  his  name  was  used  as  a  block  to  the  progress  of  religious 
thought. 

And  Mr.  E.  P.  Whipple  calls  him  "the  father  of  Theodore 
Parker,  and  the  grandfather  of  O.  B.  Frothingham.'' 

My  purpose  so  far  is  not  to  espouse  this  side  or  that,  but 
to  give  you,  as  far  as  I  can,  a  reflection  of  the  inner  life  and 
essential  principles  of  Channing.  Now,  then,  let  us  raise 
the  question,  What  is  Channing  Unitarianism  ?  What  must 
we  mean  by  it  ?  Why,  if  you  just  transcribe  Channing's  life 
at  the  first,  you  can  get  Orthodoxy  ;  touch  it  a  little  later, 
and  you  get  Arianism  ;  touch  it  a  little  later,  and  you  get 
what  is  called  Conservative  Unitarianism  ;  touch  it  at  the 
last,  find  Channing's  life  as  it  gradually  faded  out  of  human- 
ity and  became  one  with  the  Divine,  and  you  find  him  a  free 
and  broad  and  simple  humanitarian.  And,  if  we  govern  our- 
selves by  this  one  idea,  if  we  take  as  Channing  Unitarianism 
not  simply  what  he  said  at  any  particular  time,  not  simply 
what  he  did  at  any  particular  period  of  his  career,  but  the 
essential  underlying  ideas  of  his  life,  what  shall  we  find 
Channing  Unitarianism  to  be  ?  What  were  his  fundamental 
principles  ?  They  were  three,  and  they  were  very  simple, 
very  broad  :  they  were  nothing  narrower  than  those  of  uni- 
versal religion.  The  first  was  an  undying  faith  in  God, — 
trust  in  the  integrity,  the  goodness  of  the  universe.  The 
next  was  an  undying  belief  in  the  possibilities  of  human 
nature, — faith  in  man  and  what  man  might  become.  Third 
and  last  was  a  pure,  simple,  free-thinking,  reverent  ration- 
alism, as  his  one  universal  life-long  method, —  the  method 
which  he  applies  to  all  subjects  in  his  search  for  truth. 
Faith  in  God,  faith  in  man  and  reason, —  these  are  the  three 
central,  underlying,  formative,  life-giving  principles  of  Will- 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  11/ 

iam  Ellery  Channing.  They  manifested  themselves,  of 
course,  in  the  formal  doctrines  of  the  time.  If  a  person 
chooses  to  say,  "  I  cannot  listen  to  any  talk  of  modern  sci- 
ence, or  about  evolution  or  Darwin,  because  Channing  did 
not  say  anything  about  these  things,"  why,  of  course,  any 
one  on  a  moment's  reflection  will  see  that  this  is  simple 
absurdity,  for  the  very  good  and  sufficient  reason  that  these 
subjects  were  not  prominent  in  Channing's  time.  To  look 
for  these  in  Channing  would  be  like  searching  Shakespeare 
for  some  reference  to  the  telephone.  The  thing  we  are  to 
do,  then,  is  to  find  out  the  principles  that  moulded  and 
shaped  Channing's  life,  and  by  so  doing  we  shall  find  in  the 
true  sense  the  meaning  of  the  term  Channing  Unitarianism. 
We  must  not,  parrot-like,  repeat  his  words  or,  ape-like,  imi- 
tate his  deeds,  but  ask  ourselves  the  question.  What  would 
Channing  think,  what  would  Channing  do,  how  would  he 
act,  and  how  would  he  deal  with  the  living  questions  of 
to-day  ?     This  is  Channing  Unitarianism. 

Let  us  take  an  illustration.  There  are  two  ways  in  which 
you  can  claim  to  represent  Lord  Bacon,  to  be  an  exponent 
and  adherent  of  the  Baconian  philosophy.  One  is  to  devote 
yourself  to  celebrating  the  achievements  of  Bacon  himself, 
reiterating  his  language  and  practising  that  which  he  did ; 
another  is,  to  accept  his  method,  which  is  really  the  great 
thing  which  he  has  added  to  the  history  of  the  civilized 
world,  and  carry  that  out  into  the  infinitude  of  modern  life, 
and  let  it  develop  as  many  grand  and  noble  things  as  pos- 
sible. How  will  you  best  honor  the  man  who  first  invented 
the  boat  and  navigated  the  sea, —  simply,  by  keeping  on  all 
your  life  constructing  the  simplest  and  clumsiest  kind  of 
dug-outs  like  that  which  he  invented,  or  by  building  the 
finest  A  I  clipper  or  steamship  that  you  can,  that  which 
really  carries  out  the  work  which  he  undertook  to  do  ?  It 
was  not  simply  the  building  of  the  dug-out  that  he  devoted 
himself  to,  it  was  the  principle  of  navigating  the  seas  ;  and 


llS  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

the  man  who  carries  out  this  work  into  its  finest  and  truest 
development  is  the  one  who  is  the  truest  representative  of 
his  spirit.  Suppose  a  man  should  propose  to  celebrate  and 
honor  Watt  and  Stephenson,  and  in  doing  that  should  take 
no  account  of  any  improvement  of  the  steam-engine  that  has 
been  invented  since  their  times,  regarding  them  as  question- 
able novelties  :  would  that  be  the  true  way  to  honor  the  men  ? 
Rather  would  it  not  be  the  greatest  honor  to  recognize  the 
principle  of  their  magnificent  invention,  and  rejoice  in  all 
its  widest  unfolding  and  the  highest  point  of  development  to 
which  it  can  be  carried  ?  And  so  the  truest  representative 
of  Channing  is  not  the  man  who  repeats  Channing's  words, 
not  the  man  who  tries  to  keep  the  world  from  turning 
around  any  longer,  but  to  hold  it  simply  in  the  position 
where  it  was  when  Channing  died,  but  the  man  who  is  fired 
in  his  heart  by  Channing's  spirit,  a  man  who  has  Channing's 
love  for  and  faith  in  man,  Channing's  trust  in  God  and  the 
universe,  Channing's  fearlessness  in  defence  of  truth,  Chan- 
ning's devotion  to  the  lifting-up  of  men,  to  the  development 
of  everything  that  shall  go  to  make  the  world  finer  and 
sweeter  and  better,  and  who  can  say  with  Channing  that  he 
welcomes  every  new  ray  of  light  that  comes  into  the  world, 
who  dares  to  follow  truth  wherever  it  leads  him,  from  what- 
ever party  it  severs,  or  to  whatever  party  it  allies.  The  man 
who  feels  that  truth  is  safe  and  that  all  truth  is  a  manifesta- 
tion of  God,  he  is  the  true  follower  and  representative  of 
Channing  in  this  hundredth  year  after  his  birth. 


DR.  OHANnNG  THE  IDEAL  AMERICAN. 

On  Thursday,  April  8,  the  Rev.  William  H.  Channing,  of 
London,  spoke  to  a  large  congregation  in  the  South  Con- 
gregational Church  on  "  Channing  as  the  Ideal  American." 


CELEBRATION     AT    BOSTON,  1 19 

The  yonnial  of  the  next  day  contained  the  following  report 
of  that  discourse:  — 

Mr.  Channing  read,  as  the  basis  of  his  discourse,  a  portion 
of  the  third  chapter  of  Paul's  Second  Epistle  to  the  Corin- 
thians. He  spoke  first  of  the  pleasure  that  he  had  derived 
from  his  return  to  Boston,  the  place  in  which  he  was  born 
and  brought  up  ;  and  next  of  the  men  of  this  country  who 
have  been  eminent  or  who  are  now  eminent  as  jurists,  scien- 
tists, authors,  artists,  merchants,  and  reformers.  In  the 
list  of  reformers,  he  placed  as  leaders  Jonathan  Edwards, 
Charles  Chauncy,  and  William  Ellery  Channing, —  the  last 
of  whom  he  characterized  as  a  dear  son  of  God.  He  con- 
tinued :  I  wish  to  speak  to  you  of  that  man  as  the  ideal 
American.  If  ever  a  person  had  a  peculiar  privilege  in  his 
birthplace,  it  was  Channing ;  for  he  was  Dorn  in  the  land 
of  Roger  Williams,  who  was  the  real  author  of  the  life  of 
Rhode  Island.  It  was  under  the  influences  of  that  life  that 
Channing  was  reared  and  trained.  Then  he  had  the  advan- 
tage of  going  to  Virginia,  and  being  face  to  face  with  the 
very  best  type  of  Southern  statesmen.  And  then,  to  crown 
and  complete  the  circle  of  these  influences,  in  his  early 
manhood  his  lot  was  cast  in  Boston.  What  is  the  central 
idea,  the  quickening  principle,  of  all  our  institutions .''  You 
know  that  magnificent  saying  of  his,  that  all  men  are  of  one 
family.  But  do  you  know  what  is  the  inner  significance  of 
it .''  It  is  this :  every  child  of  God  is  a  prince  or  princess  of 
the  blood  royal.  Channing  taught  thus  that  everything  of 
kingliness  and  queenliness  was  in  human  nature,  in  humanity 
developed  after  the  image  of  God.  To  whom  were  given 
those  grand  lectures  of  his  on  "  Self -culture  "  and  the  "  Labor- 
ing Classes " .''  The  grandest  statement  made  in  them  is 
where  Channing  expresses  to  the  young  apprentices  of  the 
Mechanics'  Library  that  he  feels  it  a  greater  honor  to  speak 
to  them  of  their  possibilities  than  if  he  were  summoned  to 


120  CIIANNMNG    CENTKNARV. 

d  Oliver  an  address  before  the  assembled  courts  of  Europe 
Now,  see  what  was  the  next  principle,  following  directly 
from  this.  It  is  that  we  are  peers  together  in  our  Father's 
home,  that  we  are  all  children  of  God  in  this  great  family 
of  God.  He  had  a  conception  of  a  universally  cultivated 
people,  in  which  genius  should  be  as  prodigal  as  flowers  in 
midsummer.  And  here  is  one  grand  word  of  his,  still  a 
word  of  prophesying:  "  Laboring  men  and  laboring  women," 
said  he,  "demand  of  our  statesmen  that  the  public  lands  of 
this  nation,  which  are  our  common  heritage,  be  consecrated 
to  universal  education." 

Well  now,  once  more,  look  into  that  sermon  of  his  upon 
spiritual  freedom.  When  the  sermon  was  delivered,  the 
Governor  came  to  hear  it ;  the  citizen  soldiery  was  there ; 
the  Old  South  was  crowded  to  its  roof-tree.  Read  again 
that  sermon.  Teach  your  boys  that  passage  in  which  he 
describes  what  spiritual  freedom  is.  It  should  be  written  in 
lines  of  light  upon  the  walls  of  all  the  public  schools.  But 
there  came  something  more,  and  it  is  yet  to  be  considered, 
for  we  have  sadly  forgotten  it.  What  we  call  political  power 
is  not  a  right :  it  is  a  privilege  to  which  we  have  no  claim  ; 
it  is  a  free  gift  of  God ;  it  is  a  free  gift  of  humanity. 
We  claim  the  right  of  suffrage.  Channing's  doctrine  was 
directly  opposite :  it  is  the  duty  of  suffrage ;  it  is  how  far  is 
your  conscience  enlightened  to  know  justice, —  how  far  is 
your  reason  illuminated  to  know  the  truth  ?  You  claim  the 
right  to  stand  here.''  Prove  it!  His  doctrine  was  never 
that  of  promiscuous  suffrage :  he  would  have  men  go  to 
the  polls  as  they  would  go  to  an  act  of  worship,  as  if  they 
were  doing  an  act  seen  in  the  courts  on  high,  as  if  it  were 
being  measured  there  by  those  scales  of  infinite  equity. 
We  need  a  thorough  regeneration  in  this  matter.  An  entire 
new  era  is  to  come,  and  when  that  era  comes  we  may 
exclude  the  harmless  and  the  insane,  but  we  shall  exclude 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  121 

men  who  are  drunk  until  they  regain  their  reason :  we  shall 
shut  out  the  man  who  dares  offer  a  bribe  to  his  fellow;  we 
shall  welcome  our  mothers,  our  sisters,  our  wives,  and  our 
daughters.  Then  for  the  first  time  shall  we  be  a  free  and 
united  people.  It  is  time  that  doctrine  were  widely  taught 
in  the  name  of  God  and  of  Christ.  It  was  this  sublime  idea 
of  mankind  and  womankind,  of  chivalric  heroism,  that  was 
the  very  inspiration  of  Channing's  life.  He  never  uttered 
a  word  of  apprehension  for  this  republic.  He  foresaw  all 
its  troubles,  but  never  for  one  single  instant  did  he  despair 
of  it.  I  challenge  any  critic  to  find  in  his  writings  any 
word  of  distrust.  Channing's  conviction  was  clear  as  sun- 
shine that  there  was  but  one  method  by  which  our  republic 
could  realize  this  sublime  ideal  that  had  been  handed  down 
by  Puritan  ancestors,  that  had  been  washed  by  the  tears  of 
despairing  nations,  that  had  been  cleansed  in  the  blood  of 
martyrs  who  had  died  in  vain  across  the  seas,  and  that  he 
that  was  the  greatest  of  all  should  be  the  minister  of  all,  that 
there  should  be  perfect  equality  in  all  things.  He  ^aid 
again  and  again  that  there  should  not  be  in  this  republic  one 
single  pauper,  one  single  criminal,  one  single  untaught  and 
unrefined  child.  It  is  a  general  government ;  it  is  a  uni- 
versal government :  the  birthright  is  for  all ;  it  is  we  who 
are  guilty  of  pauperism  and  crime  and  degradation.  The 
reason  why  he  pressed  so  earnestly  forward  to  declare  the 
gospel  of  the  Son  of  God  was  not  because  it  interested  him 
as  a  theologian,  but  because  he  saw  the  intense  practical 
power  of  the  new  life  which  was  working  amid  the  nations. 
He  drew  very  near  to  the  beloved  Son, —  not  as  he  was 
centuries  ago  in  Palestine,  not  as  he  breathed  out  his  soul 
on  the  cross.  Jesus  has  risen.  Jesus  is  glorified.  Jesus  is 
influential.  Jesus  has  been  passing  through  all  these  cen- 
turies of  trouble  in  the  past  to  make  Christendom  Christian, 
to  make  humanity  human ;  and,  from  the  time  he  woke  in 


122  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

the  morning  until  he  slept  at  night,  it  was  Channing's 
endeavor  to  enter  into  his  labors,  to  bear  the  cross  upon  that 
road  that  leads  to  heaven  and  to  God.  He  believed  that 
nothing  but  the  Christian  life  in  our  Commonwealth  could 
bring  any  real  republic,  that  it  could  be  alone  done  by 
uniting  all  the  children  of  God. 

Has  this  been  done.-'  William  Ellery  Channing,  if  he 
were  here,  would  say :  "  Ask  yourselves  why  that  awful 
judgment  of  God  came  upon  you  in  the  civil  war.?  Are 
you  sure  that  that  punishment  was  enough  ?  Do, you  see  no 
more  awful  civil  war  than  that  between  the  States  ?  Do  you 
want  me  to  name  it.-*  Your  own  consciences  tell  you  in 
advance.  What  means  this  high,  insane  passion  for  wealth  ? 
What  means  this  miserable  pride  in  class,  in  nominal  prop- 
erty, in  money  for  yourselves  .-'  Money  is  well  enough  when 
it  is  held  as  a  trust  from  the  Great  Giver  of  all ;  but  the  man 
who  stalks  up  and  down  these  free  States,  saying  that  he 
owns  so  much  bank-stock,  so  much  in  factory  shares,  so 
much  of  God's  free  soil,  is  a  man  who  is  not  doing  the  will 
of  God.  I  tell  you  the  time  will  come  when  it  will  be  said 
that  this  form  of  possession  is  another  form  of  slavery.  To 
stand  as  a  steward  of  God  is  all  right, —  God's  blessing  be 
with  you, —  but  to  coin  blood  out  of  the  laboring  classes  is 
simply  robbery  in  the  sight  of  God."  That  is  what  he  would 
say  to  you.  He  would  say,  Shame  on  you,  unless  you  feel 
the  privilege  and  the  honor  of  universal  industry.  What  is 
the  power  whereby  demagogues  wield  the  mob }  It  is  because 
you  who  are  privileged  have  not  placed  yourself  in  sympathy 
with  the  masses.  The  danger  underlying  our  institutions  is 
that  these  demagogues  that  lead  the  masses  shall,  like  blind 
Samsons,  pull  down  our  house  over  our  heads.  The  struggle 
to  come  is  unfortunately  worse  than  that  between  slavery 
and  freedom  ;  but  it  is  before  us,  unless  we  do  our  duty.  Mr. 
Channing  spoke  of  his  own  sorrow  for  and  disgust  at  recent 


CELEBRATION     AT     BOSTON.  123 

political  revelations  at  Washington,  after  which  he  said  :  All 
Europe  is  aghast  with  the  corruption  of  our  politics,  but  the 
mightiest  scorn  of  our  bitterest  foes  is  hardly  to  be  com- 
pared with  the  reality.  Away  with  it,  away  with  it,  at  all 
costs  !  I  ask  for  regeneration,  for  reformation,  in  this  nation. 
I  am  told  that,  in  the  palaces  of  the  merchant  princes  around 
the  Common,  there  are  young  men  who  think  politics  beneath 
them.  It  seems  incredible  that  a  young  American  should 
dare  in  his  inmost  soul  for  one  single  hour  to  spit  upon  his 
birthright.  What  we  need  to  learn  is  that  those  who  are 
highest  in  their  privilege  should  feel  most  their  duty  to 
serve  the  people.  There  is  but  one  way  in  which  this 
sublime  work  of  regeneration  can  be  effected,  and  that  is  by 
elevating  the  people.  Divorce  the  Church  from  the  Com- 
monwealth !  Our  mission  is  to  wed  them  in  an  indissoluble 
union,  and  the  ring  that  binds  Church  and  Commonwealth 
together  should  be  knowledge  and  universal  culture.  Every 
home  should  be  a  church  and  a  commonwealth ;  every  home 
should  be  a  college ;  in  every  community  there  should  be 
those  instrumentalities  whereby  man  is  formed  in  the  Church 
of  God. 


124  CHANNING    CENTENARV. 


THE  CHILDREN'S  SERVICE. 


Ox  the  afternoon  of  Sunday,  April  4,  a  union  service  of 
Sunday-schools  was  held  in  the  Church  of  the  Disciples. 
Classes  with  their  teachers  were  present  from  the  South 
Congregational  Church  (the  Rev.  E.  E.  Hale's),  the  Hollis 
Street  Church  (the  Rev.  H.  B.  Carpenter's),  the  Church  of 
the  Unity  (the  Rev.  M.  J.  Savage's),  the  New  South  Free 
Church  (the  Rev.  W.  P.  Tilden's),  and  the  Church  of  the 
Disciples  (the  Rev.  J.  F.  Clarke's).  Addresses  were  made 
by  each  of  the  pastors  named  above,  by  the  Rev.  W.  H. 
Channing,  of  London,  and  by  Governor  Long.  The  church 
was  tastefully  decorated  for  the  service.  Calla  lilies  and 
other  potted  plants  were  on  each  sid'e  of  the  desk;  and  a 
beautiful  arch  of  green,  with  a  graceful  green  fringe,  rose 
to  the  top  of  the  wall  behind  the  desk.  In  the  focus  of  the 
arch  was  a  five-pointed  star  of  white  flowers  with  a  crimson 
centre.  On  the  left  of  the  pulpit  was  a  portrait  of  Dr. 
Channing. 

President  W.  H.  Baldwin,  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Union  and  superintendent  of  the  Sunday-school  of  the 
church,  conducted  the  exercises.  The  church  was  filled 
with  the  Sunday-schools,  a  large  part  of  the  congregation 
being  young  girls.  Printed  programmes  of  the  exercises, 
with  hymns,  responsive  services,  and  prayers,  were  dis- 
tributed, giving  all  the  people  an  opportunity  to  participate. 


CELEBRATION    AT     BOSTON.  125 

The  first  speaker  of  the  afternoon  was  the  Rev.  Dr.  E.  E. 
Hale.  He  spoke  of  the  character  of  the  gospel  as  a  par- 
ticular revelation  to  children.  It  had  been  kept  from  the 
wise  and  prudent  and  had  been  revealed  unto  babes.  The 
address  was  adapted  to  the  age  of  his  hearers,  and  impressed 
upon  them  the  truth  that  the  church  is  for  children  as  truly 
as  for  grown  people.  The  change  in  popular  belief  by 
which  added  importance  was  given  to  children  was  attrib- 
uted to  Channing.  "  Love  God,  love  man,  and  live  for 
heaven,"  was  a  motto  inculcated  by  Channing;  and  it  is  as 
truly  applicable  to  children  as  to  any  people. 

The  Rev.  H.  B.  Carpenter,  the  only  pastor  of  those 
present  in  whose  church  Channing  had  actually  preached, 
followed  Mr.  Hale.  Liberty  as  the  greatest  boon  of  earth 
—  greater  than  life  or  limb  —  was  the  central  thought  of  his 
address  ;  and  the  application  was  to  Channing,  who  was  filled 
with  the  spirit  of  religious  liberty,  and  who  brought  that 
liberty  to  others.  Channing  was  greater  than  any  political 
deliverer,  inasmuch  as  religious  liberty  is  of  greater  moment 
than  any  other  liberty.  Channing's  writings  were  pro- 
nounced full  of  the  great  thoughts  and  deep  reflections 
which  fill  the  writings  of  Bishop  Berkeley.  The  spirit  of 
Berkeley  and  of  Wordsworth  met  in  the  heart  of  Channing. 
The  waters  of  life  in  his  writings  are  sweet  and  soft,  pure 
and  limpid,  and  have  permeated  the  nation's  life,  making- 
great   changes. 

After  singing,  an  address  was  made  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Sav- 
age, an  address  specially  devoted  to  the  children.  It  was  a 
little  biographical  sketch  of  Channing,  put  in  simple  words 
and  sentences,  stating  his  beginning  as  an  orthodox  minis- 
ter, and  his  service  in  the  great  movement  which  resulted  in 
the  establishment  of  the  Unitarian  churches.  He  was  also 
pictured  as  a  man  fond  of  children,  winning  toward  them 
even  in  his  religious  life.     He  was  held  up  as  the  American 


126  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

saint  of  religious  freedom,  and  the  meaning  of  the  expression 
was  explained  to  the  children, 

Mr.  Savage  was  followed  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Tilden,  who 
dwelt  upon  the  influence  of  Channing's  mother  upon  her 
son,  directing  him  to  a  pure  and  noble  life.  Channing  was 
a  reflective  boy,  and  the  habit  of  thought  was  continued  into 
manhood.  Love  of  nature  was  a  marked  trait  of  his  charac- 
ter ;  but  it  was  love  of  nature  as  a  work  of  God  rather  than 
as  a  thing  of  beauty.  Channing's  influence  is  of  the  kind 
which  never  dies;  and,  in  the  highest  sense,  he  still  lives, 
and  will  continue  to  live. 

Dr.  Clarke  was  the  next  speaker,  and  began  at  once  with 
a  story  of  Channing  the  boy,  who  got  his  first  lesson  in 
doubt  of  orthodoxy  by  hearing  his  father  whistle  after  he 
had  sat  under  the  delivery  of  a  sermon  full  of  threats  of  the 
penalties  for  sin,  as  if  he  did  not  believe  it.  Channing's 
record  as  an  abolitionist  was  briefly  rehearsed,  and  an  expla- 
nation was  given,  in  language  adapted  to  children,  of  the 
great  change  which  was  effected  by  Channing  in  the  theol- 
ogy of  his  day, —  how  it  was  softened  down  from  the  wrath 
to  the  mercy  of  God  in  its  presentation  to  the  people. 

Governor  Long  followed  Dr.  Clarke  with  a  short  tribute 
to  the  memory  of  Channing  and  a  few  words  of  sympathy 
with  the  gathering.  Channing,  he  said,  is  one  of  those  men 
who,  though  dead,  live  more  and  more  in  the  expanding 
influence  of  their  lives.  Of  men  in  New  England,  none  is 
more  worthy  of  commemoration  than  this  man  who  was 
honored  by  the  day's  services.  The  Governor  suggested  the 
preparation  of  a  brief  biography  of  Channing  for  the  especial 
benefit  of  children.  He  closed  with  the  hope  that  Chan- 
ning's life  and  genius  and  teachings  would  become  as  famil- 
iar as  household  words. 

The  closing  address  was  made  by  Rev.  William  H.  Chan- 
ning, of  London,  who  spoke  of  Channing's  relations  with 
his  mother  and  of  his  great  interest  in  children. 


CELEBRATION    AT     BOSTON.  12/ 


AMERICAN  UNITARIAN  ASSOCIATION. 


ADDRESSES   AT  THE   ANNUAL  MEETING,   MAY  25,  1880. 


ADDEESS  OF  REV.  DR.  WILLIAM  HENRY  FURNESS,  OF  PHILADELPHIA. 

I  AM  not  competent,  and,  if  I  were,  I  am  not  inclined 
to  undertake  an  analysis  of  Dr.  Channing's  distinguished 
power.  From  different  mansions  of  our  common  house- 
hold of  faith,  eloquent  voices  have  spoken  his  praise,  and 
dwelt  upon  the  spiritual  and  intellectual  characteristics 
of  the  man,  and  of  the  exalted  position  which  he  holds  in 
the  religious  history  of  this  age.  And  there  are  his  writ- 
ings, as  faithful  a  portraiture  of  the  inner  man  as  the  por- 
trait of  the  outer  man  which  you  have  hanging  in  your 
studies,  the  unconscious  work  of  his  own  hand.  My  only 
qualiiication  for  the  office  which  I  have  been  honored  by 
the  invitation  to  discharge  on  this  occasion  is  that  I  happen 
to  be  one  of  the  rapidly  diminishing  number  of  those  who 
had  the  privilege  of  Dr.  Channing's  personal  friendship, 
and  in  whose  minds  the  charm  of  his  speech  is  still  strong. 
I  propose,  therefore,  only  to  talk  to  you  about  him,  and 
to  revive  as  vividly  as  I  may  the  impression  that  he  made 
on  me.  "To  analyze  the  characters  of  those  we  love,"  says 
Wordsworth,  "  is  not  a  common  nor  a  natural  employment 
of  men  at  any  time.  We  are  not  anxious  unerringly  to  un- 
derstand the  constitution  of  the   minds  of  those  who   have 


128  CII.WMXr,    Cr.NTENAKV. 

soothed,  who  have  cheered,  who  have  supported  us,  with 
whom  we  have  been  long  and  daily  pleased  and  delighted. 
The  affections  are  their  own  justification.  The  light  of 
love  in  our  hearts  is  a  satisfactory  evidence  that  there  is  a 
body  of  worth  in  the  minds  of  our  friends,  whence  that 
light  has  proceeded."  The  admiration,  the  reverence,  which 
have  shone  forth  from  so  many  hearts  here  and  abroad, 
irrespectively  of  sectarian  distinctions,  on  the  hundredth 
anniversary  of  Dr.  Channing's  birthday,  do  they  not  testify 
more  impressively  than  any  words  to  the  rare  worth  of 
him  by  whom  they  were  inspired  .-' 

The  portrait  of  Dr.  Channing,  with  which  you  are  fa- 
miliar, strikes  me  as  remarkably  faithful.     It  is  faultless. 

It  is  hard  for  those  who  knew  him  in  his  manhood  to 
believe  that  the  spiritual  power  which  he  then  manifested 
was  prefigured  by  his  physical  strength  in  boyhood,  that 
he  was  famous  among  his  playmates  as  an  athlete.  Such, 
we  are  told,  was  the  fact.  His  person  in  manhood  was  very 
slight.  His  physical  hold  upon  this  mortal  life  seemed  to 
be  of  the  feeblest.  To  the  eye,  he  was  an  apparition  that 
might  vanish  at  any  moment.  He  might  have  said,  with 
Paul,  that  his  bodily  jDresence  was  "  contemptible."  Once, 
when  speaking  of  the  doctrine  of  non-resistance,  he  said  he 
did  not  believe  that  he  could  strike  a.  man,  not  from  any 
question  of  his  strength,  but  from  his  sense  of  the  sacredness 
of  the  human  person.  The  human  body  was  to  him  the 
temple  of  the  Highest,  not  made  with  hands.  The  doubt 
arose  involuntarily  in  my  mind  whether,  if  he  did  strike,  the 
man  struck  would  be  aware  of  it.  It  is  the  spirit,  I  believe, 
that  keeps  us  all  alive,  even  the  strongest.  In  the  case  of 
Dr.  Channing,  that  was  evidently  the  vital  spring  of  his  be- 
ing. That  kept  his  most  delicate  organization  here,  and 
it  is  a  wonder  that  it  kept  him  so  long.  There  was  a  soft- 
ness in  the  expression  of   his    countenance   that    I    always 


CELEBRATION    AT     BOSTON.  1 29 

felt  like  velvet.  His  smile  was  all  the  sweeter  for  the  ap- 
pearance around  ^his  mouth  of  physical  weakness,  through 
which  it  struggled,  a  sunbeam  through  a  cloud.  His  voice, 
—  ah,  that  wonderful  voice!  —  wonderful  not  for  the  music 
of  its  tones,  but  for  its  extraordinary  power  of  expression. 
Whether  from  the  delicacy  of  the  vocal  organ  or  from 
bodily  weakness,  I  do  not  know,  it  was  flexible  to  tremu- 
lousness.  When  he  began  to  discourse,  it  ran  up  and  down, 
even  in  the  articulation  of  a  single  polysyllabic  word,  in  so 
strange  a  fashion  that  they  who  heard  him  for  the  first  time 
could  not  anticipate  its  effect, —  how,  before  it  ceased,  that 
voice  would  thrill  them  to  the  inmost.  I  cannot  liken  it  to 
anything  but  a  huge  sail,  flapping  about  at  first  at  random, 
but  soon  taking  the  wind,  swelling  out  most  majestically, 
as  Sidney  Smith  said  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh  that,  "  when 
the  spirit  came  upon  him,  he  spread  his  enormous  canvas, 
and  launched  into  a  wide  sea  of  eloquence." 

We  pronounced  Dr.  Channing  eloquent  in  speech  as  well 
as  in  style.  But  no  one  could  suppose  for  a  moment  that  he 
had  ever  taken  a  lesson  in  elocution,  or  had  ever  given  it  a 
thought,  so  original,  so  entirely  his  own,  was  his  manner 
of  speaking.  It  was  the  pure  personal  conviction  from 
which  he  spoke  that  inspired  his  voice,  and  took  sole  charge 
of  it  to  its  faintest  modulations.  When  he  read  familiar 
hymns  and  passages  of  Scripture,  one  felt  as  if  he  had  never 
heard  them  before.  The  effect  of  his  reading  was,  at  times, 
something  more  than  a  pin-drop  silence :  his  hearers  were 
awe-struck.  I  recall  single  words  which,  as  he  uttered 
them,  seemed  so  big  with  meaning  that  to  write  them  so 
that  they  might  be  as  large  to  the  eye  as  they  were  to  the 
ear  a  whole  side  wall  of  the  church  would  hardly  have  af- 
forded space  enough.  While  he  spoke  as  he  was  moved, 
and  because  he  thus  spoke,  his  speech  exemplified  the  finest 
principles  of  elocution.     There  could  not  be  a  more  striking 


130  CIIANNINC.    CENTENARY. 

instance  of  the  rising  and  falling  inflections,  which  the  books 
tell  of,  than  Dr.  Channing's  reading  of  the  close  of  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount,  where  the  wise  man  is  compared  to  one 
who  builds  his  house  on  a  rock,  and  the  fool  is  likened  to 
one  who  builds  upon  the  sand.  In  the  former  case,  the 
hearer  saw  that  the  rain  and  the  wind  and  the  flood  were 
wasting  their  fury  ;  in  the  latter,  you  felt,  before  the  catas- 
trophe was  announced,  that  the  storm  was  doing  its  work, 
and  the  house  was  already  rocking  upon  its  foundations. 

Men  are  not  canonized  until  after  death.  But  the  delicacy 
of  Dr.  Channing's  bodily  frame  was  in  such  unison  with  his 
impressively  spiritual  character,  he  had  so  light  a  garment 
of  flesh  to  put  off,  it  so  thinly  veiled  the  spirit,  that,  long 
before  it  dropped  off,  he  was  invested,  to  our  eyes,  in  an  air 
of  saintliness,  as  with  a  robe.  No  other  man  among  us  was 
so  regarded  as  one  having  his  constant  walk  and  conversa- 
tion with  eternal  verities,  which  were  bringing  him  in  life,  as 
in  death,  "messages  from  the  Spirit." 

And  now,  if  much  that  I  tell  you  of  him,  and,  relying 
upon  your  indulgence  of  old  age,  make  bold  to  repeat, —  if  I 
do  not  repeat  myself,  I  must  repeat  some  one  else,  for  little 
remains  to  be  s.aid,  except  what  our  friends,  Frederic  Hedge 
and  William  Henry  Channing,  have  to  say, —  if  what  I 
relate  seems  hardly  worthy  of  mention,  you  must  make 
allowance  for  the  peculiarly  strong  feeling  of  personal  rev- 
erence which  Dr.  Channing  inspired,  and  which  made  very 
impressive  every  word  that  fell  from  his  lips.  Certain 
things  that  he  said  made  such  deep  and  lasting  impressions 
on  my  mind  from  his  manner  of  saying  them  that  every 
word  of  his  appeared  to  be  charged  with  authority.  I  had 
the  privilege  of  hearing  his  Dudleian  Lecture,  to  which  I  am 
happy,  with  our  admirable  and  venerated  friend,  James  Mar- 
tineau,  to  acknowledge  a  great  obligation.  To  the  few  brief 
remarks  upon  the  character  of  Christ  which  occur  in  that 


CELEBRATION    AT     BOSTON.  I3I 

lecture,  I  owe  much  of  the  inexhaustible  interest  with  which 
I  have  ever  since  pursued  the  study  of  that  great  life. 

And  then  I  was  greatly  helped  by  Dr.  Channing,  when 
he  said  in  his  own  impressive  way  that  it  was  not  by  contro- 
versy that  the  hold  of  the  old  dogmas  upon  the  minds  of 
men  is  loosened,  but  by  the  dissemination  of  undisputed 
truth  and  the  expansive  force  of  general  intelligence;  in  a 
word,  that  doctrinal  errors  are  not  out-argued,  but  outgrown. 

It  was  in  accordance  with  this  teaching  that  Dr.  Channing 
rendered  his  best  service  to  a  liberal  theology.  It  is  true 
that  he  first  became  known  as  the  advocate  of  liberal  views. 
One  of  the  earliest  premonitory  signs  of  the  Unitarian  and 
Trinitarian  controversy  that  began  in  the  first  half  of  this 
century  was  a  published  correspondence  between  Dr.  Chan- 
ning and  the  Rev.  Samuel  Worcester,  an  eminent  Orthodox 
clergyman  of  Salem.  In  a  memoir  of  the  late  Rev,  Thomas 
Worcester,  the  nephew  of  the  Rev.  Samuel  Worcester  and 
the  son  of  the  Rev.  Noah  Worcester,  the  friend  of  peace  (of 
sainted  memory),  I  find  it  stated  that  Dr.  Channing  sub- 
mitted his  letters  to  the  Rev.  Samuel  Worcester  in  MS.  to 
the  Rev.  Noah  Worcester,  the  brother  of  his  opponent ;  and 
that,  after  the  correspondence  was  closed,  when  Rev.  Samuel 
Worcester  was  informed  of  this  fact,  he  expressed  regret 
that  he  himself  had  not  done  the  same, — had  not  subjected 
his  letters  to  his  brother's  revision. 

Dr.  Channing's  discourse  at  the  ordination  of  Mr.  Sparks 
was  the  first  formal  publication  of  Unitarianism  in  this 
country,  or  rather  it  was  so  received.  And,  as  such,  so  wide 
and  powerful  was  its  effect,  and  to  such  learned,  able,  and, 
on  the  whole,  courteous  controversies  did  it  give  rise,  that 
it  makes  our  Baltimore  church  historical,  a  consecrated  me- 
morial spot.  May  it  stand  forever!  Beside  that  discourse, 
the  doctrinal  writings  of  Dr.  Channing  are  few.  His  theo- 
logical  influence  wrought,  not   controversially,  but   much   in 


132  CllANN'ING    CENTEX  A  KY. 

the  same  way  that  the  principles  of  freedom  and  justice 
wroui2;ht  in  old  anti-slavery  times,  in  the  thirty  years'  war 
of  opinion  for  liberty  that  preceded  the  great  Rebellion. 
Obnoxious  as  the  anti-slavery  cause  then  was,  orthodox  men 
who  embraced  it  soon  found  it  so  rich  and  exhilarating  that 
they  discovered  how  innutritious  in  comparison  were  the  old 
traditional  husks  from  which  they  had  all  their  lives  been 
trying  to  draw  sustenance,  like  "sucklings  from  the  breasts 
of  a  dead  mother."  So  frequently  did  this  happen  that  it 
was  a  matter  of  regret  with  the  abolitionists  that  they  could 
not  win  over  to  their  side  an  orthodox  man  who  would  stay 
orthodox,  and  so  give  the  cause  the  advantage  of  his  influ- 
ence. My  kinsman,  Wendell  Phillips  (I  am  proud  of  the 
relationship),  was  the  only  man  among  them  who  retained  a 
sort  of  reputation  for  orthodoxy ;  but  somehow  or  other,  in 
his  case,  it  did  not  avail  much.  The  reason,  I  suppose,  was 
that  it  required  a  great  quantity  of  orthodox  repute,  a  great 
deal  more  than  Wendell  Phillips  was  credited  with,  to  over- 
balance his  bold  and  most  eloquent  speech.  Thus  it  was 
that  the  influence  of  Dr.  Channing's  writings  has  wrought 
to  enlarge  and  elevate  the  general  mind.  He  has  dwelt 
with  such  power  upon  the  truths  that  arc  truths  that  the 
fetters  of  a  false  theology  have  broken  and  fallen  away  with- 
out one  direct  effort  to  sever  them. 

Dr.  Channing  has  somewhere  said  that  the  defect  of  our 
Unitarian  preaching  is  that  it  is  fragmentary,  lacking  in 
unity;  and  that,  while  he  felt  deeply  his  own  shortcomings, 
he  was  thankful  for  having  been  early  and  deeply  penetrated 
with  one  great  truth, —  the  sanctity  of  the  human  soul,  the 
dignity  of  human  nature.  He  was  indeed  blessed  therein. 
Thence  it  was,  from  that  deep  fountain,  faith,  that  there 
flowed  from  within  him  rivers  of  living  water  to  refresh  and 
inspire  other  minds.  It  was  made  unto  him  eloquence  and 
wisdom  and  power.     May  I,  friends  and  brothers,  without 


CELEBRATION    AT     BOSTON.  I33 

offence  to  propriety,  add  to  Dr.  Channing's  the  testimony  of 
my  humble  experience  of  the  advantage  and  satisfaction  of 
being  early  possessed  with  some  one  great  idea .-'  I  esteem 
it  one  of  the  chief  blessings  of  my  life  that  I  was,  more 
than  half  a  century  ago,  taken  with  a  strong  desire  to  ascer- 
tain the  simple  historical  truth  concerning  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth. This  study  has  been  my  faithful  companion,  com- 
forter, and  friend.  I  cannot  tell  whether  it  is  as  a  literary  or 
religious  question  that  it  has  most  interested  me. 

The  feeble  health  rendered  Dr.  Channing  reserved  and  a 
recluse  to  such  a  degree  that  it  has  been  said  that  he  had  no 
sense  of  humor.  And  we  certainly  never  thought  of  telling 
him  humorous  stories  in  order  to  ascertain  the  fact.  I  think, 
however,  that  fine  sense  was  latent  in  him.  I  am  assured 
by  one  who  knew  him  better  than  I  that  there  was  no  ques- 
tion of  its  existence.  I  asked  him  once  rather  hesitatingly 
(it  was  at  a  time  when  I  was  riding  full  gallop  that  hobby  of 
my  steed)  whether  he  ever  read  Elia,  the  first  of  humorists. 
"Oh!"  he  exclaimed  with  animation,  "that  is  the  finest 
English  of  our  day."  I  do  not  think  one  can  appreciate 
Charles  Lamb's  English  and  be  insensible  to  his  humor. 
Once,  when  we  were  talking  of  a  popular  writer  of  the  hour, 
of  whom  I  had  expressed  a  favorable  opinion,  Dr.  Channing 
asked  with  an  amusing  tone  of  contempt  in  every  syllable, 
"Do  you  suppose  he  can  say  anything  of  anybody .-' " 

The  habitual  tone  of  his  mind  was  profoundly  serious. 
No  one  could  be  in  his  presence  without  feeling  that  he  was 
a  man  whose  thoughts  were  running  upon  the  greatest  in- 
terests. He  was  often  attacked  by  disease,  when  his  life 
hung  by  a  thread,  and  he  knew  how  feeble  the  tie  was  that 
kept  him  here.  Once,  when  dangerously  ill,  he  expressed 
a  desire  to  live,  because  he  "had  something  to  say."  He 
lived  among  us,  dwelling  as  few  do  in  the  inner  world,  and 
subsisting  on  food  that  our  world  knows  not  of. 


134  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

In  his  later  years,  in  order  to  escape  from  your  east 
winds,  he  was  wont  to  spend  a  few  weeks  in  the  spring  time 
in  Philadelphia,  where  he  had  special  pleasure  in  the  ac- 
quaintance of  members  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  a  body 
to  whom  he  felt  a  strong  attraction,  cherishing  great  venera- 
tion for  John  Woolman  and  Elias  Hicks,  "  those  faithful 
sons  of  the  morning,"  as  the  venerable  Lucretia  Mott  calls 
them.  Then  it  was  that  I  had  the  pleasure  and  instruction 
of  frequent  intercourse  with  him.  I  remember  how  he 
spoke  of  Mr.  Emerson,  whose  light  had  then  risen  and  was 
shining  on  us  all.  "  I  do  not  know,"  said  Dr.  Channing, 
"  that  he  tells  me  anything  new,  but  he  inspires  me."  (Is 
not  this,  by  the  way,  a  greater  service  than  the  communica- 
tion of  any  amount  of  knowledge,  secular  or  sacred  ?)  "  He 
has  no  partisans,"  he  continued :  "  his  warmest  admirers 
hold  their  own.  He  does  not  need  any.  Emerson  is  a 
hero."  It  was  on  one  of  those  annual  visits  that  Dr.  Chan- 
ning delivered  his  lecture  before  our  Mercantile  Library 
Association  upon  "The  Universality  of  the  Age."  As  he 
had  rarely  spoken  in  public  save  ujDon  religious  occasions,  I 
asked  him,  before  the  evening  of  the  lecture  came,  whether 
he  had  ever  been  applauded  while  speaking.  Upon  his 
replying  in  the  negative,  I  warned  him  of  the  applause 
that  would  be  sure  to  break  out  as  often  as  he  should  give 
it  opportunity.  I  knew  that,  if  it  were  distasteful  to  him, 
he  would  not  hesitate  to  request  its  discontinuance.  I  had 
heard  of  his  asking  his  hearers  in  church,  before  beginning 
his  sermon,  not  to  cough, —  a  quite  unnecessary  request,  it 
seemed  to  me,  as  people  forgot  not  only  to  cough,  but  even 
to  breathe,  when  he  preached,  as  I  have  heard  it  testified  on 
more  occasions  than  one.  Once  a  friend  who  had  just  come 
from  hearing  him  preach  in  his  old  pulpit  in  Federal  Street 
told  me  that,  at  the  close  of  a  certain  passage  in  the  sermon, 
the  people  all  over  the  church  could  be  heard  taking  their 


CELEBRATION    AT     BOSTON.  1 35 

breath.  The  same  report,  almost  in  the  very  same  words, 
came  to  me  years  afterwards,  from  one  who  had  just  been 
listening  to  Dr.  Channing  in  New  York.  Generally  speak- 
ing, the  coughing  of  a  congregation  is  the  fault  or  the  mis- 
fortune of  the  preacher.  It  always  ceases  when  an  impres- 
sive passage  comes  in  the  sermon.  I  had  the  whooping- 
cough  pretty  severely  after  I  became  a  settled  minister.  I 
should  be  ashamed  to  mention  it,  if  I  had  ever  been  seized 
with  a  paroxysm  while  in  the  pulpit,  as  that  would  have 
betokened  that  I  was  not  interested  in  what  I  was  doing. 
As  with  the  preacher,  so  with  the  hearers  :  they  do  not 
cough  when  they  are  interested.  But  pardon  me :  I  am 
growing  garrulous. 

On  the  occasion  of  Dr.  Channing's  lecture  in  Philadelphia, 
there  was  no  restlessness,  no  clearing  of  throats,  but  a  deep 
silence,  broken  by  frequent  impassioned  bursts  of  applause, 
that  ceased  suddenly,  as  if  there  were  a  fear  on  all  that  a 
word  might  be  lost.  Seldom  has  such  an  assembly  been 
gathered  in  our  city.  I  never  saw  a  large  crowd  more  com- 
pletely spell-bound.  After  speaking  some  thirty  minutes, 
at  a  moment  when  he  had  the  whole  audience  under  his 
sway,  he  paused,  and  said  that,  with  their  permission,  he 
would  sit  down  and  rest  awhile, —  a  simple  act,  and  in  per- 
fect character.  Who  else  would  have  hazarded  the  resump- 
tion of  his  power .''  Who  else  would  not  have  risked  the 
fatigue,  rather  than  have  broken  the  spell  and  laid  his  wand 
aside .-'  There  was  no  one  else  but  himself  tired  or  likely  to 
be.  All  else  were  drinking  in  great  draughts  of  refreshment. 
When  he  rose  again  and  resumed  his  discourse,  the  spell  was 
as  powerful  as  ever,  and  so  it  continued  to  the  end.  "  What 
did  he  stop  for .-'  "  one  of  the  retiring  crowd  was  heard  to 
e.xclaim.  "  Why  did  he  not  go  on,  and  tell  us  what  he 
thought  about  everything  ?  "  I  said  to  him  afterward  that  I 
had  warned  him  against  the  applause,  but  that  it  struck  me 


136  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

as  very  intelligent  and  hearty.  "Oh,"  said  he,  "it  did  me 
good  ! "  Did  him  good  not  as  a  personal  tribute  at  all,  but 
as  an  impressive  declaration  of  agreement  with  him.  Does 
not  Mr.  Carlyle  somewhere  quote  Novalis  as  saying  that  his 
conviction  of  any  truth  is  doubled  in  strength  the  instant 
another  is  of  the  same  mind  .-'  The  hearty  assent  of  a  thou- 
sand and  more  to  one's  word  must  needs  do  one  good. 

I  do  not  think  that  in  all  Dr.  Channing's  writings  there 
can  be  found  so  vivid  a  figure  of  speech  as  occurs  in  that 
same  Philadelphia  lecture.  We  Philadelphians  boast  of 
having  given  to  the  world  Benjamin  Franklin,  of  Boston. 
Dr.  Channing  gratified  our  pride  by  a  graceful  allusion  to 
the  illustrious  philosopher,  and  said  (I  quote  from  memory) 
that  "  when  Philadelphia  should  be  a  ruin,  and  the  darkness 
of  desolation  should  rest  over  the  place,  the  kite  with  which 
Franklin  drew  the  lightning  from  the  skies  would  still  be  vis- 
ible to  the  eye  of  posterity."  We  all  saw  it,  floating,  white, 
afar  off  in  the  darkness.  Dr.  Channing's  fancy  seems  to  me 
to  be  singularly  subdued  and  chastened.  It  throws  a  delicate 
grace  over  his  forms  of  expression.  It  never  runs  away  with 
him,  or  betrays  him  into  saying  more  than  he  felt.  "  People 
always  sympathize,"  he  once  remarked,  "  with  suppressed 
emotion."  The  least  hint  of  reserved  power  always  touches 
us  to  the  quick.  Every  mother  knows  the  pathos  of  the 
grieved  lip  when  her  infant  child,  equally  ready  to  cry  and 
to  laugh,  struggles  to  keep  from  crying.  We  felt  that  there 
was  deeper  faith  in  Dr.  Channing  than  words  could  express. 

No  man  could  be  more  indifferent  than  he  to  literary 
reputation,  rich  as  he  was  in  literary  qualifications.  He 
esteemed  nothing  that  he  possessed,  except  as  it  could  be 
made  subservient  to  the  best  interests  of  his  fellow-men. 
One  of  the  discourses  which  attracted  special  notice  abroad 
was  one  of  his  earliest  publications,  his  sermon  on  War.  "I 
think  Channing  an  admirable  writer,"  says  Sydney  Smith, 


CELEBRATION    AT     BOSTON.  1 37 

in  a  letter  to  Countess  Grey, — "  so  much  sense  and  elo- 
quence !  such  a  command  of  language  !  Yet,  admirable  as 
is  his  sermon  on  War,  I  have  the  vanity  to  think  my  own 
equally  good,  quite  as  sensible,  quite  as  eloquent,  as  full  of 
good  principle  and  fine  language ;  and  you  will  be  the  more 
inclined  to  agree  with  me  in  this  comparison,  when  I  tell 
you  that  I  preached  in  St.  Paul's  the  identical  sermon  which 
Lord  Grey  so  much  admires.  I  thought  I  could  not  write 
anything  half  so  good,  and  so  I  preached  Channing."  My 
friend,  Mrs.  Kemble,  told  me  that,  once  in  conversation  with 
Miss  Berry,  the  intimate  friend  of  Horace  Walpole,  and 
religion  was  the  topic,  "  My  dear,"  the  old  lady  said  to  her, 
"  I  am  a  Channingiie."  By  the  way,  over  what  a  long  stretch 
of  time  a  few  lives  may  extend !  Horace  Walpole  tells  us 
that  he  recollected  seeing,  when  a  boy,  a  lady  who  belonged 
to  the  court  of  James  H. 

The  essay  on  Milton,  first  published  in  the  Christian 
Examiner,  in  1826,  contemporaneously  with  an  article  on  the 
same  subject  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  by  Macaulay,  was 
Dr.  Channing's  first  excursion  from  the  pulpit.  I  remember 
receiving  the  number  of  the  Exaininer  containing  the  essay, 
and  thinking  at  first  that  it  was  the  work  of  a  new  hand  in 
that  periodical ;  but  I  recognized  the  author  before  I  finished 
it,  although  I  was  quite  unprepared  to  meet  Dr.  Channing 
there.  The  two  essays  hardly  admit  of  comparison.  Macau- 
lay's  is,  I  suppose,  the  more  learned  and  brilliant  ;  but  I 
cannot  read  Macaulay  now  without  having  in  mind  a  remark 
of  Dr.  Johnson's,  that  he  who  writes  antithetically  "desires 
to  be  applauded,  not  credited," — a  remark  which  I  suspect 
the  grand  old  man  m^de  from  the  depths  of  his  own 
consciousness.  I  call  Dr.  Johnson  old :  did  any  one  ever 
imagine  him  as  young .''  It  is  a  long  time  since  I  read  Dr. 
Channing's  essay,  but  I  remember  it  seemed  to  me  to  sweep 
on,  a  broad  tide  of  eloquent   enthusiasm.     Dr.  Channing's 


138  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

works  have  been  twice  noticed  in  the  Edinburgh  Review, 
long  the  leading  English  periodical  :  first  by  Hazlitt,  who 
is  ill-natured  and  depreciating, —  partly,  I  suppose,  because, 
being  the  son  of  an  English  Unitarian  clergyman,  he  had 
taken  offence  at  certain  remarks  of  Dr.  Channing's  unfavora- 
ble to  the  theology  of  the  English  Unitarians,  Priestley  and 
Belsham  ;  but,  more  than  that,  Hazlitt  bore  no  good-will  to 
Dr.  Channing  for  his  most  Christian  estimate  of  Napoleon, 
—  an  estimate  the  justice  of  which  time  is  confirming.  Na- 
poleon was  Hazlitt's  pet  argument  against  legitimacy  and 
the  divine  right  of  kings.  Be  that  as  it  may,  Hazlitt's  ill- 
nature  made  not  the  slightest  impression  upon  Dr.  Chan- 
ning, who  always  spoke  of  him  with  special  interest.  I 
doubt  whether  he  ever  read  Hazlitt's  criticisms,  although  I 
do  not  doubt  that  he  knew  of  them.  Everybody  read  the 
Edinburgh  in  those  days,  when  there  was  not  such  a  library 
of  reviews  as  there  is  now. 

The  second  notice  of  Dr.  Channing  in  the  Edinburgh  was 
understood  to  be  by  Lord  Brougham.  It  was  characteristi- 
cally savage.  But  it  was  not  the  first  time  that  his  lordship 
had  committed  the  egregious  blunder  of  disparaging  men 
greater  than  himself.  In  the  very  first  volume  of  the  Review 
(in  1803),  he  had  the  ignorant  arrogance  to  pronounce  a 
paper  "destitute  of  every  species  of  merit," -r- a  paper  in 
the  Philosophical  Transactions,  written  by  Thomas  Young, 
the  author  of  the  undulatory  theory  of  light,  and  the  reader 
of  the  hieroglyphs, —  a  man  of  whom  Professor  Tyndall 
(and  he  is  an  authority)  has  said  that,  if  a  line  were  drawn 
from  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  horizontally  down  toward  our  time, 
it  would  pass  over  all  heads  until  it  came  to  Thomas 
Young,  who  towers  tota  vertice  above  all  Newton's  suc- 
cessors. I  spoke  once  to  Dr.  Channing  of  Lord  Brougham's 
notice  of  him,  and,  encouraged  by  his  love  of  free  speech, 
I  said  that,  while  the  spirit   of   that    notice  was    offensive, 


CELEBRATION    AT     BOSTON.  I39 

some  of  the  criticisms  seemed  to  me  to  have  force.  "  Oh, 
very  likely,"  was  his  reply.  "  The  favorable  reception  that 
essay  met  with  was  wholly  unexpected  by  me.  I  have  no 
doubt  Lord  Brougham  is  right.  /  have  never  read  his  arti- 
cle." Considering  the  sensitiveness  of  our  people  to  Eng- 
lish opinion, —  not  now,  perhaps,  so  marked  as  in  those 
earlier  days, —  I  admired  Dr.  Channing  greatly  for  his  indif- 
ference to  what  so  distinguished  a  person  as  Lord  Brougham 
thought  of  him.  It  was  one  of  many  proofs  of  how  little 
he  cared  for  fame.  No  concern  for  that  ever  biassed  his 
judgment  the  weight  of  a  hair.  It  has  been  observed  that 
the  members  of  all  small  sects  are  apt  to  inflame  one 
another  with  exaggerated  praise.  And  it  must  be  admitted 
that,  when  the  number  of  avowed  Unitarians  were  small, 
we  thought  a  good  deal  of  one  another.  We  were  the  wise 
men,  doubtless ;  and  wisdom  would  die  with  us.  But  it 
was  never  for  a  moment  conceived  that  Dr.  Channing  was 
at  all  open  to  flattery.  .  He  was  as  insensible  to  it  as  nature 
herself,  and  we  could  no  more  think  of  moving  him  than 
her  by  our  plaudits.  Whether  of  good  report  or  evil  report 
in  the  critical  world,  it  was  all  the  same  to  him.  When  told 
that  Robert  Southey  had  pronounced  him  the  most  remark- 
able American  he  had  met  with,  "  It  must  have  been  then," 
he  said,  "  because  I  was  so  good  a  listener.  I  hardly  said 
a  word.  Mr.  Southey  did  all  the  talking."  Such  being 
the  case,  we  do  not  wonder  that  Southey  spoke  so  highly 
of  him.  Is  not  the  first  qualification  of  a  good  conversa- 
tionalist that  he  shall  be  a  good  listener  ^ 

Sir  Walter  Scott  quotes  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu 
as  saying  that  the  most  romantic  part  of  any  region  is  where 
the  mountains  melt  into  the  plains  and  lowlands.  Some 
thing  of  the  same  sort.  Sir  Walter,  with  a  jjoet's  eye,  finds 
to  be  true  in  history.  Those  periods,  he  remarks,  being 
the  most   picturesque    in  which   rude,  barbaric   customs  are 


I40  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

beginning  to  be  softened  by  the  approach  of  greater  enlight- 
enment. And  is  not  the  same  true  in  the  history  of  opinions, 
of  religious  opinions  ?  Is  it  not  exemplified  in  our  revered 
teacher  and  friend  ?  It  is  interesting  to  note  how,  born 
when  a  theology  reigned  that  made  the  atmosphere  of  New 
England  thick  with  gloom, —  it  is  beautiful  to  see  how 
steadily,  though  gradually,  his  lovely  light  rose  and  pene- 
trated and  dispersed  the  clouds, —  in  a  word,  how  constantly 
he  grew,  a  growing  man  to  the  last,  the  old  and  the  new 
mingling  in  him  in  ever-increasing  disproportion  ;  at  the 
first,  the  most  eloquent  advocate  of  a  liberal  faith  ;  at  the 
last,  caring  less  and  less,  as  he  said,  for  Unitarianism,  and 
more  and  more  for  universal  humanity.  Advancing  years 
brought  no  fetters  for  him ;  in  age  abounding  in  the  faith 
and  hopefulness  of  youth,  growing  ever  younger,  and  like 
the  morning  light  shining  brighter  and  brighter,  ever  ap- 
proaching the  perfect  day. 

Addresses  upon  Channing  were  also  given  by  Rev.  Dr. 
Hedge  and  Rev.  William  H.  Channing,  of  which  we  pre- 
sent abstracts  :  — 

ADDRESS  OF  EEV.  DK.  HED&E. 

There  is  nothing  more  respectable  in  man  than  his  enthu- 
siasm for  a  great  and  worthy  object.  The  sentiment  of 
reverence  and  admiration  for  what  is  excellent  is  the  inex- 
tino-uishable  hope  of  human  society.  To  it  belongs  the 
future  of  th^  race.  What  is  it  that  we  admire  in  Channing  ? 
I  agree  to  all  or  nearly  all  that  has  been  said  by  the  elo- 
quent speakers  who  have  set  forth  in  these  centennial  days 
the  many  noble  qualities  of  the  orator  and  the  man.  I  still 
ask  myself,  Why  do  we  admire  the  impersonation  of  these 
qualities  in  Channing  ?  And  the  answer  is,  I  think,  because 
they  are  a  revelation  of  our  own  nature, —  in  them  we  see 


CELEBRATION    AT     BOSTON.  I4I 

as  in  a  glass  our  better  selves.  This  unfathomable  human 
nature  of  ours  in  its  manifold  and  everlasting  workings,  out 
of  the  ground  forces  of  its  constitution  has  once  again 
heaved  up  a  character  beyond  the  level  of  the  common, — 
a  peak  that  has  caught  a  ray  of  the  everlasting  morning, 
and  draws  our  wondering  eyes.  When  I  attempt  to  classify 
Channing,  I  find  him  to  belong  to  that  class  of  theologians 
whose  opinions  are  shaped  by  their  feelings, —  who  see 
through  the  medium  of  their  sentiments, —  the  sentimental 
class.  These  are  the  ones  who  have  acted  with  the  greatest 
power  in  and  on  the  religious  world,  and  who  have  fed  the 
life  of  the  Church. 

My  next  characterization  of  Channing  may  seem  fanciful ; 
but  I  am  deeply  in  earnest  when  I  say  that  he  was  one  of 
those  in  whom  a  feminine  soul  incarnates  itself  in  a  mascu- 
line body.  The  feminine  principle  in  human  nature,  we  are 
told,  is  that  which  leads  heavenward.  There  is  a  sex  in 
souls  as  well  as  in  bodies,  and  they  do  not  always  coincide. 
Occasionally,  a  masculine  soul  appropriates  to  itself  a  femi- 
nine body  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  a  feminine  soul  is  some- 
times clothed  with  a  masculine  body.  Lessing  said  that 
Nature  intended  woman  to  be  her  masterpiece,  but  she 
made  a  mistake  in  the  clay  and  took  it  a  little  too  soft. 
There  was  nothing  "soft"  in  the  opprobrious  sense  in  Dr. 
Channing.  But  the  feminine  soul  in  him  reveals  itself  in 
his  exceeding  refinement,  in  his  moral  sensibility,  in  his  spir- 
itual hunger,  and  negatively  in  his  want  of  humor.  It 
revealed  itself  above  all  in  the  excess  of  aspiration  over 
insight. 

Last  of  all,  I  define  Channing  as  "  the  last  of  the  Deists," 
—  the  man  in  whom  Deism  culminated  and  reached  its  Nir- 
vana. I  am  aware  that  that  name  has  an  odious  sound  to 
orthodox  ears,  but  I  hasten  to  explain :  not  the  Deism 
which   rejects   what  is  called,   whether   rightly  or  not,  the 


142  CHANNING    CENTKNAKV. 

supernatural  element  in  Christianity,  but  the  iheosophic 
Deism,  which  regards  God  as  not  only  personal  and  formally 
distinct  from  (Creation,  but  as  substantially  separated  from 
creation, —  an  outside  God, —  a  mighty  individual,  who  created 
not  onl)'  the  forms,  but  the  substance  of  the  universe. 

In  one  thing,  Channing  stood  before  and  above  all  others, 
and  for  it  above  all  others  we  prize  and  praise  him, —  the  one 
thing  dear  to  men  of  all  times  and  climes,  dear,  as  nothing 
else  is  or  can  be,  to  the  universal  heart  of  man  ;  and  I  am 
sure  of  the  consent  of  all  who  hear  me  when  I  name  it, — 
liberty ;  liberty  based  on  the  dignity  of  human  life.  This 
is  what  Channing  especially  stood  for,  labored  for,  and  would 
have  died  for, —  yes,  and  did  dio.  for,  when  out  of  the  sanc- 
tuary of  his  own  respectability  he  stretched  forth  his  hand 
to  aid  the  release  of  Abner  Kneeland,  imprisoned  for  free- 
dom of  thought ;  when  in  his  solemn  ire  at  the  murder  of 
Lovejoy  he  craved  the  use  of  the  sacred  place  in  which  to 
offer  up  the  birth-offering  of  public  indignation.  He  died  to 
the  respect  and  good-will  of  old  friends  and  fellow-citizens, — 
died  to  rise  to  life  again,  and  to  live  forever  in  the  gratitude 
and  honor  of  the  generations  following. 

ADDEESS  OF  EEV.  WILLIAM  HENRY  CHANNING. 

As  regards  William  Ellery  Channing  and  his  ideals,  my 
impression  is  that  his  first  ideal  was  this :  the  ideal  of  an 
integral  education  for  every  single  mortal  on  this  globe.  He 
believed  that  every  single  human  being  was  intrinsically 
great, —  had  genius,  had  heroism;  that  it  was  the  accident 
of  the  time  that  prevented  this  outbreak  of  the  divine,  in  all 
its  varied  forms,  in  every  human  being.  He  really  believ-ed 
in  the  possibility  of  an  integral  education  that  should  bring 
out  the  latent  virtue  of  the  manhood  and  womanhood  of  the 
men  and  women  around  us.    Then  he  had  this  other  thought : 


CELEBRATION    AT     BOSTON.  I43 

that  you  must  make  round,  symmetrical,  beautiful,  this  cult- 
ure of  the  human  being.  Then  he  wanted  the  spirit  of 
beauty  poured  through  all  life,  to  bind  men  together. 

His  second  grand  ideal  was  that  of  a  perfectly  organized 
society.  He  had  set  his  whole  heart  and  soul  upon  making 
this  city  of  his  adoption  an  ideal  city.  And,  if  you  study  his 
life  as  I  have,  you  will  be  surprised  to  find  how  the  little 
germs  that  he  planted  have  developed  here  into  grand  insti- 
tutions. He  believed  in  the  possibility  of  the  capital  of  this 
Bay  State,  even  when  it  was  comparatively  a  little  town, 
developing  into  a  perfect  type  of  a  Christian  community  ; 
and  it  was  his  deep  sorrow  that  he  could  not  take  a  more 
active  part  in  hastening  onward  this  development.  He  was 
not  an  enthusiast  or  a  visionary.  He  was  a  man  of  solid 
judgment,  a  man  of  good  business  powers,  pre-eminently  a 
practical  man ;  and,  if  you  will  talk  with  those  who  guided 
the  business  and  social  reforms  of  that  day,  you  will  see  that 
his  judgment  was  singularly  critical  and  discriminating,  and 
made  apt  suggestions,  and  that  some  of  the  best  schemes  for 
working  came  from  his  study. 

Another  ideal :  it  seems  to  me  that,  of  all  men  who  have 
lived  since  the  days  of  our  forefathers,  no  man  has  ever 
drunk  more  deeply  of  the  fountains  of  the  life  of  this  Repub- 
lic than  did  William  Ellery  Channing.  His  ideas  and  hopes 
for  this  nation  were  sublime.  His  thought  was  of  a  united 
nation  that  should  bring  out  all  the  resources  of  art  and  of 
conscience,  and  of  will  and  of  imagination,  and  of  aspiration, 
and  blend  them  together  into  a  perfect  whole.  He  believed 
in  the  possibility  of  our  taking  such  an  attitude  among  the 
nations  of  the  earth  that  we  should  be  peace-makers  and 
peace-keepers,  standing  as  the  great  representative  and 
prophet  of  a  universal  peace.  And,  while  believing  in  this, 
he  still  believed  that  every  nation  should  hold  its  own,  and 
discharge  its  own  trusts,  and  stand  up  to  the  work  which 
God  gave  it  to  do. 


144  CHANNINU;    CKNTENAKV. 

lie  was  the  prophet  of  a  transfigured  humanity,  the 
prophet  of  a  Christ-like  humanity,  dwelling  in  close  and 
living  communion  with  God.  That  is  what  he  was  in  hope 
and  aspiration,  and  those  who  stood  nearest  to  him  know 
that  that  is  what  he  was  in  character  and  life.  He  was  a 
living  temple,  and  from  him  flowed  a  holy  influence,  in 
every  glance  of  his  eye,  in  his  every  gesture  and  his  every 
word.  His  mere  presence  was  a  benediction  and  an  open 
heaven. 


MEETING  AT  BROOKLYN,  N.Y. 


[This  meeting,  the  largest  and-in  many  respects  the  most  interesting  and  sig- 
nificant of  all  those  held  in  America,  has  already  been  very  fully  reported  in 
a  handsome  octavo  volume,  edited  by  Rev.  Dr.  Alfred  P.  Putnam,  and  pub 
lished  by  Mr.  George  H.  Ellis,  loi  Milk  Street,  Boston.  The  following  report 
is  an  abridgment  from  that  fuller  one.] 

The  plan  of  the  Brooklyn  celebration  was  brought  to  the 
attention  of  the  Trustees  of  the  Church  of  the  Saviour  early 
in  January.  The  enterprise  was  regarded  with  earnest 
favor ;  and  a  Committee  of  Arrangements  was  appointed  to 
take  it  in  hand  and  carry  it  forward  to  completion.  People 
and  churches  of  the  neighborhood  and  the  public  at  large, 
without  regard  to  creed  or  name,  were  cordially  asked  to 
join  in  the  celebration.  The  response  from  all  sides  was 
most  gratifying.  It  was  found  that,  however  widely  men 
were  separated  from  Dr.  Channing  by  their  theological  opin- 
ions, yet  all  recognized  some  vital  point  of  agreement  or 
sympathy  with  him. 

The  pulpit  of  the  Church  of  the  Saviour  was  occupied  on 
Sunday,  April  4,  by  Rev.  A.  D.  Mayo,  of  Springfield,  Mass., 
whose  sermons,  morning  and  evening,  the  one  on  "  New 
Saints  for  the  New  Republic,"  and  the  other  on  "Our 
Common  Christianity,"  closed  with  tributes  to  Dr.  Chan- 
ning, and  formed  a  fitting  introduction  to  the  memorial 
services  of  the  week. 

The  opening  services  of  the  l^rooklyn  meeting  were  held 


146  CHANNINO    CENTENARY. 

in  the  Church  of  the  Saviour  on  Tuesday  evening,  Ai)ril  6. 
The  church  was  filled  with  people  of  all  denominations  in 
the  city,  a  large  number  of  representative  clergymen  and 
laymen  of  the  different  sects  and  neighboring  churches 
being  in  the  audience.  After  a  voluntary  on  the  organ  and 
an  anthem  by  the  choir,  prayer  was  offered  by  the  Rev. 
Riifus  Ellis,  D.D.  The  Rev.  Joseph  May  read  appropriate 
selections  from  the  Scriptures.  A  commemorative  dis- 
course, from  the  text,  "The  righteous  shall  be  in  everlasting 
remembrance,"  Psalm  cxii.,  6,  was  then  delivered  by  Rev. 
Dr.  Andrew  P.  Peabody,  of  Harvard  University. 

The  memorial  meeting  was  held  in  the  Church  of  the 
Saviour  on  the  next  day,  Wednesday,  April  7,  at  10  A.M. 
The  church  was  again  crowded  with  representatives  of  all 
denominations.  There  were  many  present  from  the  neigh- 
boring towns  and  cities.  On  and  around  the  pulpit  and  tab- 
lets were  rich  and  abundant  floral  decorations.  The  baptis- 
mal font  was  surmounted  with  a  large  and  beautiful  cross 
and  star  of  flowers,  a  gift  from  the  Church  of  the  Messiah, 
New  York.  Directly  in  front  of  the  pulpit,  resting  upon 
an  easel,  and  facing  the  audience,  was  the  fine  portrait  of 
Dr.  Channing  by  Ingham,  kindly  lent  for  the  occasion  by 
Dr.  Bellows,  its  owner.  The  services  were  opened  with  a 
chant  by  the  choir.  After  prayer  by  Rev.  F.  W.  Holland, 
a  former  pastor  of  the  first  Unitarian  congregation  gathered 
in  Brooklyn,  the  Rev.  Dr.  A.  P.  Putnam,  Chairman,  made 
the  following  address  of  welcome  :  — 

EEMAEKS  OF  EEV.  DE.  PUTNAM  (Chairman). 

Friends,  we  bid  you  one  and  all  a  hearty  welcome  to  this 
celebration  of  the  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birthday 
of  William  EUery  Channing.  Our  first  thought  was  to  have 
a  single  service,  to  be  held  in  this  church,  and  to  consist 
mainly  of  a  commemorative  discourse.     But  very  soon  the 


CELEBRATION    AT    BROOKLYN.  I47 

plan  assumed  a  larger  form,  and  especially  as  we  remem- 
bered that  here  was  a  name  that  belonged  to  the  Church 
universal,  that  was  reverenced  in  all  communions,  and  that 
would  most  fittingly  be  honored  by  friendly  voices  from  all 
the  churches  and  sects  around  us.  We  therefore  arranged 
a  more  extensive  programme,  and  cordially  invited  ministers 
and  laymen  of  Brooklyn  and  elsewhere,  of  whatever  creed 
or  worship,  if  they  had  any  sympathy  with  the  spirit  or 
purpose  of  the  occasion,  or  had  any  word  to  speak  of  love 
or  gratitude  in  memory  of  Channing,  to  come  and  freely 
participate  in  the  services.  We  were  very  glad,  nor  were 
we  at  all  surprised,  to  find  that  representative  men  of  quite 
every  faith  or  name  in  the  community  were  ready  and  more 
than  willing  to  respond  to  the  call,  and  to  lend  their  presence 
and  voices,  too,  in  furtherance  of  the  object  we  ha?l  in  view. 
Many  of  them  are  with  us  here,  and  you  will  have  the 
pleasure  of  hearing  what  they  have  to  offer.  Others  have 
expressed  the  deepest  interest  in  the  proposed  meetings  of 
the  day,  and  regretted  that  absence  from  the  city  or  press- 
ing engagements  would  render  it  impossible  for  them  to 
attend.  We  invite  the  freest  utterance  on  the  part  of 
those  who  may  feel  moved  to  address  the  audience,  be  they 
Protestants  or  Catholics  ;  and  we  expect  here  this  morning, 
and  at  the  Academy'  this  evening,  a  full  and  varied  expres- 
sion of  honest  thought  and  feeling  in  relation  to  the  one 
great  theme  that  engages  us. 

I  shall  not  long  detain  you  with  words  of  my  own,  since 
there  are  so  many  others  whom  you  have  come  and  arc 
waiting  to  hear.  But,  before  I  take  my  seat,  I  must  read 
two  or  three  letters  which,  of  the  many  I  have  received  from 
far  and  near,  to  be  read  during  the  proceedings  of  the  day, 
seem  to  me  a  fit  introduction  to  what  may  follow  at  this 
particular  meeting.  The  first  is  from  Rev.  William  H. 
Channing,  nephew  and  biographer  of  Dr.  Channing,  who,  as 


T48  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

you  are  well  aware,  has  very  recently  arrived  in  this  country 
from  England,  but  whose  engagement  made  long  ago  to  be 
at  Newport  to-day  prevents  him  from  being  present  here 
with  us.  Another  will  be  found  to  be  of  great  interest  to 
you,  dictated  as  it  was  —  though  the  signature  is  in  his  own 
handwriting — by  the  Rev.  George  G.  Channing,  of  Milton, 
Mass.,  the  only  surviving  brother  of  him  whom  we  meet  to 
honor,  and  himself  now  ninety-two  years  of  age.  Patiently 
he  awaits  the  not-distant  hour  when  he  shall  rise  to  join  the 
ascended  and  sainted  one.  And  another  letter  still  is  from 
the  Rev.  Charles  T.  Brooks,  the  revered  and  beloved  poet- 
preacher,  who  fpr  so  many  years  was  the  minister  of 
the   Unitarian   Church  at   Newport,  Channing's  birthplace. 

[These  letters,  with  many  others,  some  of  which  were  read  by  Rev. 
S.  H.  Camp  at  later  stages  of  the  meeting,  and  some  were  received  after 
the  celebration  was  over,  will  be  found  in  the  Appendix  of  the  fuller 
Report  of  this  meeting.] 

I  have  a  special  purpose  in  introducing  Mr.  Brooks'  letter 
just  at  this  point.  Much  anxiety  has  been  felt,  as  you  know, 
lest  the  required  sum  of  fifty  thousand  dollars  for  the  new 
Memorial  Church  at  Newport  might  not  all  be  pledged  by 
the  time  the  corner-stone  should  be  laid  to-day.  Great 
effort  has  been  made  to  this  end  in  various  quarters.  Last 
Saturday,  I  received  a  telegram  from  Rev.  Mr.  Schermer- 
horn,  present  minister  of  the  Society  there,  saying  that  five 
thousand  dollars  more  were  needed,  and  asking  additional 
help  from  the  Church  of  the  Saviour.  On  Monday,  I  sent 
him  word  that  my  people  on  Sunday  had  contributed  another 
thousand,  and  asked  him  to  let  me  know  by  Tuesday  the 
state  of  things.  This  morning  before  breakfast,  a  telegram 
came,  informing  me  that  there  was  still,  at  the  last  hour,  a 
deficiency  of  two  thousand  dollars.  Through  the  generosity 
of  a  member  of  my  parish,  it  was  my  privilege  and  joy  to  re- 
turn immediately  the  message  that  the  deficiency  was  met. 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  1 49 

[Applause.]  It  is,  therefore,  permitted  our  assembled  friends 
there  to  go  on  and  lay  the  corner-stone  of  the  new  edifice 
with  rejoicing;  and  I  cannot  help  feeling  a  little  pride  that 
it  has  been  given  to  my  own  beloved  Church  to  add  the 
capstone.     [Renewed  applause.] 

And  now  I  beg  to  present  to  you  Rev.  Dr.  Farley,  my 
venerable  predecessor  as  pastor  of  this  Church,  who  is 
connected  by  marriage  with  the  family  of  Rev.  George  G. 
Channing,  and  who  will  speak  to  you  of  Dr.  Channing  from 
personal  acquaintance  and  varied  associations  with  him. 

REMAEKS  OF  EEV.  DR.  F.  A.  FARLEY. 

I  do  not  think,  my  friends,  that  there  is  any  heart  among 
you  that  is  filled  with  more  grateful  emotions  than  my  own, 
in  connection  with  all  the  associations  .of  this  anniversary. 
It  was  my  good  fortune  —  shall  I  not,  rather,  say  that  it  was 
"by  the  blessing  of  God"  my  great  privilege.?  —  to  know 
Dr.  Channing  in  the  early  and  more  impressible  period  of 
my  life,  and  especially  during  my  preparatory  studies  for 
the  ministry. 

I  recur  to  the  time  when  I  was  a  student  in  the  Divinity 
School  at  Cambridge,  and  when  I  was  accustomed  to  go 
into  Boston  on  the  return  of  the  Lord's  day,  and  listen  to 
the  preaching  of  this  eminent  man. 

The  first  reminiscences  of  Dr.  Channing,  therefore,  which 
come  to  my  mind,  are  connected  with  his  public  ministry, 
with  the  discharge  of  his  duties  in  the  Christian  pulpit ;  and 
I  am  sure  that,  among  those  who  have  been  preachers  of 
Christ  and  his  holy  gospel,  never  has  there  been  a  man 
who,  from  the  sacred  desk,  more  entirely  held  the  minds  and 
the  hearts  of  those  who  listened  to  him ;  and  never  were 
there  people  who  sat  under  preaching  with  more  reverent 


15^  CHANNING   CENTENARY. 

and  yet  more  tender  feelinj^-  than  those  who  heard  the 
sweet,  gentle,  inspiring,  mighty  words  of  that  sainted  man 
of  God. 

After  what  was  said  by  our  dear  Brother  Peabody  last 
evening  in  his  admirable  discourse,  it  might  seem  superflu- 
ous to  attempt  even  to  give  expression  to  the  recollections 
which  rise  from  my  own  memory,  in  relation  to  the  manner 
of  Dr.  Channing,  the  matter  of  his  sermons,  the  power  which 
they  manifested,  or  even  to  glance  at  the  influence  which 
must  have  followed,  and  which  we  know  did  follow  and  is 
still  destined  to  follow,  his  remarkable  utterances  and  pub- 
lished writings.     But  I  am  called,  and  must  obey. 

Among  the  portraits  of  Channing  there  is  one  that  has 
not  been  given  to  the  public,  and  is  now  the  property  of  my 
brother-in-law,  George  G.  Channing,  of  Milton.  It  is  a  por- 
trait painted  by  the  celebrated  Stuart  of  Boston.  Somehow 
or  other,  the  widow  of  Dr.  Channing,  and,  I  believe,  both 
of  his  surviving  children,  did  not  value  this  portrait  as  it 
has  always  seemed  to  me  it  deserved ;  and  therefore,  among 
the  various  portraits  which  have  been  made,  and  which  have 
been  copied  by  the  engraver  and  the  photographer  and  sent 
forth  to  the  world,  this  does  not  appear.  But  it  remained  a 
very  treasured  memory  in  the  mind  of  the  late  Dr.  Walter 
Channing,  eminent  in  the  medical  profession,  and  of  his 
brother  George,  as  also  of  his  sister,  Mrs.  Russell.  It  is 
now,  as  I  said  before,  the  property  of  the  Milton  branch 
of  the  family  in  Massachusetts.  That  portrait  presents  to 
my  own  remembrance  Channing,  as  at  that  day  he  appeared 
in  the  pulpit  of  the  old  Federal  Street  Church.  He  is 
painted  in  the  costume  which  was  then  almost  universal 
with  our  clergy,  of  the  robe  and  surplice  and  bands.  And 
it  brings  him  before  me  every  time  I  look  at  it  with  a  lifelike 
power,  precisely  as  he  seemed  to  me  in  the  very  prime  of 
his  active  ministry.     Next  to  that,  I  should  place  the  per- 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  I5I 

trait  by  S.  Gambardella,  painted  in  1839,  when  Dr.  Chan- 
ning  was  fifty-nine  years  old ;  a  fine  line  engraving  of  which, 
by  Kimberly  and  Cheney,  is  prefixed  to  the  second  volume  of 
the  admirably  finished  Memoir  of  his  distinguished  uncle,  by 
William  Henry  Channing ;  and  a  photograph  of  the  same  to 
our  Brother  Charles  T.  Brooks'  interesting  volume,  "  A  Cen- 
tennial Memory,"  just  from  the  press,  and  which,  in  passing, 
I  desire  warmly  to  commend  to  my  hearers. 

The  portrait  before  you  was  executed  by  the  late  Charles 
C.  Ingham,  of  New  York,  at  his  own  suggestion,  on  one  of 
Channing's  visits  to  that  city,  and  is  now  the  property  of 
Dr.  Bellows,  who  very  kindly  lent  it  to  us  for  this  occa- 
sion. In  some  respects,  those  of  you  who  are  familiar  with 
the  portrait  of  Gambardella  will  be  able  at  once  to  trace 
a  very  considerable  resemblance  between  this  and  that. 
Gambardella's  is  the  latest,  and  was  painted  for  Dr.  Chan- 
ning's intimate  friend,  the  late  Jonathan  Phillips,  of  Boston, 
the  senior  deacon  of  his  church.  There  is  very  much  about 
Ingham's  portrait  that  is  like  Dr.  Channing  in  the  later 
years  of  his  life.  It  presents,  certainly,  an  image  of  that 
thin,  spare  habit,  which  was  a  very  marked  point  in  his  per- 
sonal appearance,  and  of  the  spirituelle  expression  of  his 
face. 

You  have  been  told  that  he  was  what,  in  a  certain 
sense,  may  be  called  a  tiny  man.  He  was  tiny  in  his  figure. 
He  was  a  very  small  man,  and  proportionately  thin.  I 
never  knew  him  at  any  time  when  he  appeared  other  than 
thin.  From  the  loss  of  teeth  in  early  life,  his  cheeks  were 
comparatively  hollow. 

But  there  was  that  in  his  eye  which,  I  am  sure,  my 
Brothers  Peabody  and  Holland,  and  the  few  others  who 
remember  him,  cannot  forget.  Not  only  did  it  speak  and 
flash  with  his  words  in  the  pulpit ;  but  in  his  private  con- 
versation and    in    his   most   familiar    hours  there  was  still, 


152  CHANNING   CENTENARY. 

with  all  its  softness  and  y;cntlcncss,  a  remarkably  searching 
quality. 

In  regard  to  his  pulpit  ministrations,  I  beg  to  say  that  I 
have  never  heard  a  preacher  in  whom  there  was  less  of 
what  might  be  called  display.  His  manner  was  very  simple 
and  very  engaging.  He  usually  leaned  upon  his  left  arm, 
with  his  manuscript  in  the  left  hand ;  and  this  habit  was 
largely,  beyond  doubt,  the  result  of  the  delicacy  of  his  con- 
stitution and  general  debility.  A  very  slight  movement  — 
and  always,  as  Dr.  Peabody  said  last  evening,  purely  "volun- 
tary," with  the  forefinger  of  the  right  hand  raised — was 
about  all  the  gesture  in  which,  ordinarily,  he.  indulged.  But 
most  remarkable  was  his  intonation.  Why,  although  that 
voice  from  its  general  feebleness  seemed  to  make  it  impos- 
sible that  he  should  be  heard,  even  in  an  auditorium  of  the 
size  of  the  Federal  Street  Church,  which  was  about  the  size 
of  this,  yet,  such  was  its  special  and  peculiar  quality,  that  I 
suppose  there  never  was  a  person  who  went  out  from  those 
walls,  after  listening  to  Dr.  Channing,  without  having  heard 
and  understood  every  word  he  uttered !  One  great  reason  of 
this  may  have  been  the  intense  silence  which  attended  his 
public  ministrations.  The  slightest  foot-fall  on  the  carpet 
could  have  been  heard  while  he  was  speaking.  At  times, 
in  his  loftiest  flights  and  in  the  most  earnest  appeals  which 
he  made  to  the  hearts  and  consciences  of  his  hearers,  his 
voice  was  slightly  raised;  but  there  was  no  straining  after 
effect.  The  manner  was  perfectly  natural,  just  as  natural  as 
when  he  sat  with  you  in  conversation  ;  and  yet,  impressive 
as  it  was,  no  one  can  describe  it,  and  you  are  left  entirely  to 
your  imagination  to  conceive  of  it. 

But  what  shall  I  say  of  his  prayers  ?  There  is  one  of  our 
brethren  now  living,  in  very  advanced  age,  of  whom  I  have 
often  heard  it  said  —  I  refer  to  our  venerable  and  beloved 
friend,  Dr.  Dewey  —  that  it  seemed  to  require  a  very  painful 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  1 53 

effort  to  utter  himself  in  public  prayer.  I  think  there  never 
was  a  greater  mistake.  It  was  no  effort,  except  it  were  sim- 
ply the  effort  of  self-control.  So  awed  was  he  in  the  felt 
presence  of  the  Almighty,  and  in  the  responsible  office  of 
leading  the  devotions  of  his  people,  that  he  seemed  to  speak 
under  a  certain,  not  morbid,  but  most  natural  feeling  of  con- 
straint ;  and  tears  have  been  observed  to  follow  his  profound 
inward  emotion.  That  the  heart  was  full  to  the  brim,  every 
word  that  he  uttered  and  the  very  expression  of  his  counte- 
nance faithfully  proved. 

There  was  nothing  in  Dr.  Channing  of  this  peculiarity  of 
Dr.  Dewey.  His  prayers  were  the  simplest  utterances  of 
the  most  affectionate  and  devout  feeling  of  the  confiding, 
trusting  child,  communing  with  an  all-loving  Father,  uttered 
in  the  most  tender  and  yet  the  most  earnest  tones.  It  be- 
came contagious,  and  lifted  his  hearers  to  the  same  plane  of 
devout  feeling  with  himself.  All  the  words  which  he  uttered 
in  prayer  seemed  to  come  from  the  very  depths  of  his  own 
consciousness,  and  to  reach  those  of  his  fellow-worshippers, 
who  were  thus  brought  at  once  into  communion  with  the 
same  Blessed  Spirit  who  was  filling  his  own  heart.  Taking 
these  two  men  together,  who  were,  moreover,  most  intimate 
friends,  I  think  I  never  heard  from  other  human  lips  such 
soul-subduing,  touching,  inspiring,  uplifting  prayer  to  the 
Source  of  all  good. 

I  pass  from  Channing's  public  ministry  to  say  a  word  or 
two  of  what  I  must  esteem,  as  has  been  intimated  already, 
a  most  blessed  privilege, —  that  of  personal  communion  with 
him  in  the  quiet  of  his  own  study  and  home.  I  would  go  of 
an  evening  to  his  study,  and,  finding  him  alone,  would  sit 
with  him,  perhaps  an  hour  or  two ;  and  I  confess  that  the 
chief  feeling  which  carried  mc  there  was  the  consciousness  of 
the  merest  pupil  in  the  presence  of  a  great  teacher.  Shall  I 
say  that  he  commanded  me  into  this  feeling?     By  no  means. 


t54  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

From  the  reverence  which  was  inspired  by  what  I  had  expe- 
rienced of  his  work  in  public,  and  from  the  knowledge  of 
his  saintly  character  derived  through,  what  afterwards  be- 
came a  dear  family  connection,  I  realized  to  some  extent 
in  what  a  remarkable  presence  I  stood,  and  what  a  fulness 
there  was  in  the  fountain  within  Iiim,  of  the  sprinklings  of 
which  I  desired  to  partake. 

I  see  in  many  notices  of  Dr.  Channing  references  to  him 
as  a  remarkable  conversationalist.  I  remember  very  well  one 
occasion,  after  his  brother-in-law,  Mr.  Allston,  had  received 
a  letter  from  Coleridge,  in  which  allusion  was  made  to  him, 
I  asked  Dr.  Channing  who  he  considered  the  best  conver- 
sationalist that  he  met  abroad,  the  two  prominent  names  at 
that  time  being  Sir  James  Mackintosh  and  Coleridge.  He 
very  promptly  answered,  "Sir  James  Mackintosh."  He 
added  that  Mackintosh  had  remarkable  conversational  power, 
and  that  it  was  truly  conversational  ;  while  Coleridge,  on  the 
other  hancl,  discoursed,  and  that  one  had  only  to  propose  to 
Coleridge  a  subject  or  a  question  to  have  him  instantly 
pour  forth  from  his  rich  and  cultured  mind  and  soul  most 
remarkable  utterances,  quite  at  length.  I  could  not  help 
thinking,  at  the  moment,  that  that  was,  to  a  certain  extent, 
the  case  with  himself.  So  far  as  my  own  experience  was 
concerned,  it  really  seemed  so  to  me ;  but  then  you  must  re- 
member I  was  only  a  novice,  an  inexperienced  young  man. 
And  I  regard  it  as  a  blessed  condescension  on  his  part  that, 
when  I  ventured  to  bring  a  subject  before  him,  he  gave  me 
such  distinct  and  prolonged  attention,  and  shed  upon  it  such 
a  flood  of  light. 

In  the  letter  referred  to,  Coleridge  said,  in  substance,  "  I 
have  had  the  pleasure  of  becoming  acquainted  with  your 
honored  friend.  Dr.  Channing,  whom  I  consider  the  most 
remarkable  conversationalist  that  I  ever  met  from  your 
land."     When  I   repeated  this,  he   said,    with  his  quietest 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  155 

manner  and  gentlest  voice,  albeit  with  a  slight  twinkle  of 
his  eye,  "Ah!  that  was  because  I  was  so  good  a  listener." 

When  I  was  in  his  study,  at  various  times,  I  find  on  recol- 
lection that  he  was  accustomed,  as  we  used  to  say  in  college, 
to  "pump"  me.  He  began  by  questioning  me,  I  might 
almost  say,  in  the  Socratic  way ;  but  his  object  seemed  to 
be  to  get  into  my  mind, —  a  very  easy  thing  for  him  to  do, 
by  the  way,  for  there  was  very  little  there  at  that  time,  at 
least ;  and,  by  the  questions  and  the  themes  which  he  pro- 
posed to  riddle  me  through  and  through ;  and  then,  by  and 
by,  to  help  me,  in  the  kindest  manner  possible,  at  once  to 
realize  my  own  faulty  way  of  search,  and  put  me  on  the 
right  track,  by  pouring  into  my  soul  some  of  those  effective 
and  weighty  suggestions  which  so  frequently  fell  from  his 
lips.  Such  was  his  way  of  dealing  with  a  young  man,  and 
was  it  not  a  wholesome  way  .'* 

I  would  come  from  him  to  the  family  of  my  wife,  tell 
them  where  I  had  been,  and  express  my  delight  in  the  visit. 
They  wondered  why.  And  here  I  am  led  to  speak  of  Chan- 
ning  as  he  appeared  in  his  ordinary  intercourse.  Persons 
of  high  culture  and  intellectual  accomplishment  met  him, 
not  exactly  with  awe,  but  with  a  feeling  of  profound  respect 
and  even  reverence ;  and  others,  with  entire  confidence,  so 
that  they  could  be  at  once  at  ease  with  him  ;  while  there 
were  many  cases  in  his  congregation,  as  in  that  very  family 
to  which  I  have  alluded,  where  the  moment  he  appeared 
among  them  there  was  shrinking  as  from  a  being  of  a 
superior  order. 

Now  was  this  because  he  put  on  airs.-*  Was  it  because 
he  assumed  anything.?  Why,  he  was  the  simplest  of  human 
beings  in  his  whole  manner  and  speech.  But  it  was  the  in- 
tense reverence,  notwithstanding  all  the  admiration  which 
they  might  have  of  him  as  a  preacher  and  as  a  man,  which 
he  inspired  through  the  saintliness  of  his  very  bearing  and 


156  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

lile  on  all  occasions  and  under  all  circumstances;  and  they 
could  not  forget  it. 

I  would  say,  "  I  have  had  a  most  delightful  evening  with 
Dr.  Channing."  "Delightful.?  How  could  it  have  been  de- 
lightful ?  Why,  I  shrink  into  nothingness  when  I  am  in  his 
presence,"  would  be  the  response,  perhaps.  And  then  I 
told  them  that  I  went  there  and  got  just  what  I  wanted  ; 
that  in  the  veriest  sweetness  of  condescension  he  listened  to 
my  poor  words,  and  poured  out  the  better  words  and  the 
richer  thoughts  he  had  to  give  me,  and  sent  me  away  from 
that  place  again  and  again  with  the  inspiration  I  had  gained 
quickening  my  resolves  for  good,  and  filling  me  with  a 
heartier  thirst  for  truth,  knowledge,  and  freedom.  I  could 
not  possibly  make  it  understood  that  to  me,  in  the  relation 
in  which  I  stood  to  him  as  a  very  humble  and  a  very  de- 
sirous-of-learning  pupil,  it  was  possible  that  I  had  had  a 
delightful  evening. 

How  often  have  I  heard  him  lament  that  he  could  not 
draw  all  his  people  nearer  to  him  in  more  familiar  inter- 
course in  his  pastoral  walk,  —  in  which  no  one  could  have 
been  more  faithful,  —  and  divest  them  of  all  timidity  in  their 
approaches !  His  sympathy  in  their  sorrows  and  trials,  how- 
ever, all  felt;  for  the  spell  of  that  none  could  resist.  He  had 
no  "small  talk";  but  he  was  simple  and  gentle  as  a  child. 
And  this  leads  me  to  allude  to  his  love  of  children  and  his 
manner  toward  them.  Never  can  I  forget  a  little  incident 
in  connection  with  one  of  my  own.  I  had  taken  my  oldest 
boy,  then  perhaps  four  or  five  years  old,  to  spend  a  night  at 
"Oakland,"  his  lovely  summer  retreat  at  Portsmouth,  R.I. 
His  marked  kindness  soon  won  the  heart  of  the  little  fellow  ; 
and  the  next  day,  after  early  lunch  preparatory  to  our  drive 
liome,  and  the  chaise  being  ready  at  the  gate,  the  doctor 
took  the  child,  nothing  loath,  in  his  arms,  and,  carrying  him 
to  the  vehicle,  put  him  safely  in,  kissed  him,  and  bade  him 
"  good-by." 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  I  57 

I  was  about  to  say  something  of  the  charm  of  this  remark- 
able man  in  his  home  at  Rhode  Island,  which  I  had  so  often 
the  happiness  of  enjoying  during  my  first  ministry  at  Provi- 
dence. It  was  one  of  the  loveliest  spots  in  the  world ;  but 
his  presence,  sweet  yet  dignified  manners,  affectionate  inter- 
course with  his  family  and  guests,  only  made  it  the  more 
lovely.  "  Happy,"  says  his  nephew  in  his  "  Memoir,"  — 
"  happy  the  guest  who  is  to  ride  with  Dr.  Channing  in  his 
chaise !  It  is  a  most  plain  vehicle,  indeed,  and  the  horse 
knows  well  that  he  may  trespass  almost  without  remon- 
strance on  his  master's  good-nature  ;  but  who  can  regret  the 
slowness  of  a  drive  which  prolongs  the  delight  of  his  con- 
versation ? "  Happy,  indeed  !  On  one  of  these  drives,  when 
he  had  just  been  reading  a  spirited  paper  by  Samuel  J. 
May,  advocating  the  extremest  doctrine  of  non-resistance, 
the  doctor,  after  analyzing  the  argument  of  our  excellent 
friend,  raised  his  tiny  but  clenched  fist, — at  the  moment 
and  under  the  circumstances  seeming  almost  ludicrously 
small,  —  and,  turning  to  me,  exclaimed,  "  Ah,  Brother  Far- 
ley, but  there  are  occasions  when  we  i7i?cs^  fight!"  But  I 
leave  this  theme,  so  much  fuller  and  better  treated  than  I  can 
pretend  to  treat  it,  to  the  delightful  pages  of  his  nephew  and 
Mr.  Brooks. 

There  are  two  occasions  in  my  life,  Mr.  President,  which 
brought  me  into  close  and  most  affecting  contact  with  Dr. 
Channing,  which  can  never  be  forgotten,  and  the  remem- 
brance and  influence  of  which  will  go  with  me,  I  trust,  to 
my  final  account.  To  him,  indeed,  more  than  to  any  other 
mere  man,  more  than  to  any  other  being  that  has  trod  this 
earth,  except  my  divine  Saviour,  do  I  owe  whatever  of  quick- 
ening impulse  I  have  felt  in  my  religious,  moral,  professional 
life.  The  first  of  these  was  my  ordination  to  the  Chris- 
tian ministry  at  Providence,  in  1828,  when  he  preached  that 
great   sermon  on  "  Likeness   to  God."    With  all  who   then 


158  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

heard  him,  despite  the  emotion  wliich  naturally  tlirilled  a 
young  heart  at  such  a  time,  I  was  carried  away  from  my- 
self. Never,  too,  was  his  manner  so  inspired  and  grand, 
so  animated  and  free ;  and  this  was  the  universal  judg- 
ment on  all  sides  expressed.  By  accident,  the  platform 
on  which  he  stood  lifted  his  tiny  form  so  much  above  the 
pulpit  cushion  that  he  could  not,  as  was  his  wont,  lean  upon 
it.  When  he  began  to  speak,  he  seemed  slightly  embar- 
rassed, and  now  and  then  looked  around  and  beneath  him,  as 
though  he  sought  relief ;  but  then,  gathering  up  his  strength 
in  his  decision  to  go  on,  he  stood  erect,  and  went  through 
with  his  discourse  with  the  unction  and  fervid  eloquence  of 
a  prophet.  Then  came  the  good  old  symbolic  custom  of  the 
Congregational  Churches,  which  seems  to  have  well-nigh  died 
out  in  our  branch  of  that  body, —  "the  laying  on  of  hands  "  ; 
and  he,  with  others  of  the  fathers  and  brethren  in  the  min- 
istry, laid  his  hand  upon  my  head.  If  anything  could  have 
added  to  the  touching  and  solemn  significance  of  those  ordi- 
nation services,  it  was  the  conscious  pressure  of  that  hand 
upon  my  head,  while  the  prayer  of  consecration  rose  in  my 
behalf  to  the  Father  of  our  spirits. 

Once  more,  he  it  was  — in  connection  with  his  colleague, 
of  blessed  memory,  ray  very  dear  friend  in  later  years,  Ezra 
Stiles  Gannett  —  who  with  his  own  hands  joined  my  wife's 
hands  and  mine  in  the  holy  sacrament  of  marriage ;  and  his 
look  and  word  as  he  gave  us  his  blessing  went,  I  tell  you, 
to  the  heart. 

Do  you  wonder,  as  I  close,  that  I  look  back  on  my  inter- 
course witli  that  beloved  and  saintly  man  with  feelings  im- 
possible indeed  to  express,  and  which  I  must  leave  you  to 
imagine.''  With  unfeigned  gratitude,  with  great  joy  in  the 
remembrance ;  and  with  confident  faith  that  if  his  spirit  be 
conscious  now  of  what  we  and  so  many  all  over  Christen- 
dom are  engaged  in  to-day,  he  joins  in  our  thanksgivings 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  I  59 

for  what  he  was  inspired  to  do,  and  the  fruits  of  which  we 
are  reaping,  for  the  Church  Universal,  and  its  "unity  of 
spirit  in  the  bond  of  peace";  yet,  let  us  give  the  glory  to 
God!     [Applause.] 

Dr.  Farley's  address  was  listened  to  with  deep  interest  by 
the  audience.  At  its  conclusion,  the  Chairman  introduced, 
as  the  next  speaker,  Rev.  J.  B.  Thomas,  D.D.,  Pastor  of  the 
Pierrepont  Street  Baptist  Church,  who  was  heartily  ap- 
plauded, as  he  came  forward  to  the  platform. 

EEMARKS  OF  REV.  J,  B.  THOMAS,  D.D. 

Were  there  no  other  occasion,  I  should  be  most  happy  to 
be  here  to-day  in  response  to  the  courtesy  of  my  valued 
friend  and  neighbor,  whose  spotless  life  and  faithful  minis- 
try and  amiable  spirit  I  have  so  long  known.  I  find  it  easy 
to  obey  the  Scripture  precept  to  love  my  neighbor  as  myself; 
and  I  am  glad  to  share  in  all  things  that  make  him  glad  and 
in  all  things  that  he  reverences. 

But,  aside  from  that,  this  occasion  has  for  me  an  interest, 
as  I  trust  it  has  for  all  lovers  of  their  kind,  who  believe  that 
good  men  are  not  superfluous  in  the  world,  and  are  not  to  be 
hastily  forgotten. 

I  am  associated  with  that  body  of  -people  whom  Dean 
Stanley  recently  called  "the  austere  sect,"  —  the  Baptists, — 
and  whom  he  regards,  and  probably  many  others  regard,  as 
the  most  unprogressive  Christian  people.  It  might  seem 
strange  that  there  should  be  the  suggestion  of  any  possible 
affinity  between  them  and  you  who  are  accounted  the  most 
progressive ;  and  yet,  were  I  to  look  to-day  for  the  largest 
and  most  trenchant  compilation  of  authorities  sustaining  our 
views  on  the  particular  question  which  outwardly  separates 
us  from  other  Christians,  I  should  look  for  it  in  the  Racovian 
Catechism. 


l6o  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

If  you  and  Dr.  Channing  are  the  product  of  Ihc  Reforma- 
tion, so  are  we.  If  you  insist  upon  the  spirit  of  free  inquiry, 
so  did  we.  If  you  insist  upon  supremacy  of  the  spirit  over 
form,  whether  in  organization  or  in  expression,  so  have  we, 
so  do  we.  The  root  of  our  organization  is  not  in  exterior 
separation,  by  ordinance  or  by  creed,  but  in  the  radical 
proposition  that  the  word  of  God  alone,  unmanacled,  unper- 
verted  by  the  decree  or  the  organized  influence  of  man,  is 
sufficient  for  the  individual  soul.  Such  is  the  corner-stone 
of  our  organization. 

When  I  say  this,  I  do  not  forget  that,  in  the  years  since 
the  Racovian  Catechism  was  promulgated,  you  and  we  have 
gone  far  apart.  I  have  no  fear  to-day  that  you  will  be  mis- 
taken for  Baptists  because  you  invite  me  to  speak,  or  that  I 
shall  be  mistaken  for  a  Unitarian  because  I  respond  to  your 
invitation. 

I  am  reminded,  however,  that  this  occasion  is  a  memorial, 
not  of  the  particular  faith  which  you  hold  or  of  the  particu- 
lar organization  which  you  represent,  but  of  the  particular 
man  to  whom  you  do  honor.  I  am  reminded  that  that  man 
himself  accounted  himself,  and  I  trust  that  by  those  who 
appreciate  him  he  is  accounted,  as  above  the  organizations 
which  he  deprecated  as  merely  provisional,  regarding  them 
as  matters  of  necessity,  but  believing  that  man  was  before 
the  organized  church,  that  he  will  be  after  it,  and  that  he  is 
superior  to  it,  [Applause.]  I  remember  with  what  earnest- 
ness he  inveighed  and  protested  against  those  barriers  and 
hinderances  which  cramped  from  without,  rather  than  devel- 
oped from  within,  the  nature  that  God  has  given  us.  I 
remember  how  sterling  a  champion  he  was  for  freedom  to 
seek  the  truth;  and,  if  you  will  pardon  me,  still  more  by 
his  spirit  than  by  his  word,  a  champion  of  the  purest  spiritu- 
ality in  i:eligion. 

Many  years  have  passed  since  he  was  taken  from  us.     In 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  l6l 

that  very  profound  and  moving  discourse  to  which  I  had  the 
feHcity  of  listening  with  many  of  you  last  night,  the  question 
was  asked,  How  has  the  time  so  changed  that  men  of  all 
faiths  are  ready  to  do  reverence  to  Dr.  Channing .''  It  is  true, 
unquestionably,  that  the  time  has  gone  by  when  men  will  be 
at  once  disposed  of  by  classifying  them  under  the  organiza- 
tions to  which  they  belong.  ■  Men  count  as  tiien.  Pondcran- 
tur  noil  numerantiir.  In  parliamentary  assemblies,  sometimes, 
in  haste,  they  read  bills  by  their  titles,  and  so  dispose  of 
them ;  but  let  men  no  longer  be  read  by  their  titles  or  by 
their  ecclesiastical  relationships:  let  them  be  pondered,  in 
order  that  we  may  know  what  is  in  them.  No  man  was  ever 
more  earnest  than  Dr.  Channing  in  the  opinion  that  the  prin- 
cipal thing  in  a  man  is  not  the  specific  intellectual  conception 
of  truth  that  he  has,  but  his  devotion  to  the  truth  as  truth  ; 
that  a  man  should  be  true  to  the  truth, —  not  that  he  should 
accept  my  opinion  or  your  opinion,  but  that  he  should  main- 
tain his  own  opinion  until  he  get  a  better  one,  and  that  he 
should  be  seeking  always  for  a  better  one.  This,  I  appre- 
hend, he  put  above  any  exterior  relation.  This,  I  take  it, 
he  thought  would  bring  the  world  along,  rather  than  any 
mechanical  process.  This,  as  I  understand  it,  he  believed  to 
be  God's  ideal  of,  and  God's  preparation  for,  the  progress 
of  truth  and  of  Christianity  in  the  world.  And  this  I  sympa- 
thize with. 

I  remember  Dr.  Channing's  trenchant  papers  on  creeds, 
copies  of  which  I  see  here.  Dr.  Channing  was  an  alert  dis- 
putant. He  was  a  man  of  rare  clearness  in  statement.  He 
was  a  man  of  vigorous  and  forcible  logical  faculty,  and,  I 
think,  not  altogether  unwilling  to  cross  the  sword  in  debate, — 
for  men  like  to  do  that  which  they  can  do  well ;  and  yet  I  have 
never  been  prepared  to  accept  the  suggestion  that  his  discus- 
sions were  emotionless,  and  transparent  only  because  they 
were  icy.     They  rather  seem  to  me  to  be  luminous  with  the 


l62  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

light  within  the  cloud.  As  has  been  pithily  said  of  another: 
"His  words  are  vascular.  Cut  them,  and  they  would  bleed." 
Underneath  them,  you  catch  the  throb  of  the  heart;  and 
this  it  is  that  will  perpetuate  his  memory  among  all  men. 
Men's  thoughts  perish  in  the  day  that  they  are  born,  they 
are  but  as  the  leaves  of  autumn  ;  but  the  spirit  that  informs 
them  lives  in  them  and  goes  beyond  them,  as  it  goes  beyond 
the  life  of  man. 

In  that  noble  discussion  of  last  evening,  emphasis  was  laid 
upon  Dr.  Channing's  loyalty  to  Christ.  "  Grace  be  with  all 
them  that  love  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in  sincerity."  I  was 
taught  it  in  my  childhood,  I  seek  to  apprehend  it  in  my 
manhood.  May  God  let  me  die  with  that  spirit  in  my  heart 
and  those  words  upon  my  lips. 

When  Dr.  J.  W.  Alexander  died,  and  the  passage  was 
quoted,  "  I  know  whom  I  believed,"  and  it  was  corrected  by 
inserting  the  preposition  "  zV/,"  he  said,  "  No !  no  !  I  know 
whom  I  have  believed."  Now,  Dr.  Channing  did  not  profess 
to  know  all  about  Him  whom  he  believed  :  he  did  profess  to 
know  Him.  As  through  his  clear  eye  he  looked  beneath  the 
husk  of  things  in  politics,  in  humanitarian  reform,  in  the  dis- 
cussions of  the  time,  in  literature,  in  all  the  phases  of  human 
existence,  and  saw  life  within  form  greater  than  form,  so 
he  reverenced  Christ  as  revealed  through  a  deeper  faculty 
and  a  more  spiritual  intimacy  than  logical  definition  brings. 
Therefore,  he  was  a  man  of  mighty  power  in  his  day,  and  a 
man  whose  influence  will  not  speedily  die. 

I  should  perhaps  stop  here,  for  I  am  not  a  missionary  to 
this  people ;  but  will  you  permit  me,  having  expressed,  as  I 
sincerely  feel,  the  most  unfeigned  admiration  for  Dr.  Chan- 
ning, to  make  a  suggestion,  which  I  would  not  have  ven- 
tured but  for  an  allusion  that  I  heard  from  one  [Dr. 
Peabody]  whom  men  of  all  faiths  reverence,  and  to  whose 
utterances  they  listen  with  devout  respect,  and    with   the 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  1 63 

most  earnest  desire  to  profit  by  them?  Alluding  to  the 
widely  diverse  developments  of  Unitarianism  since  Dr. 
Channing's  day,  he  spoke  of  it  as  the  "Texas  of  Chris- 
tendom," to  which  men  holding  all  shades  of  opinion  had 
resorted,  when  forced  by  the  rigor  of  creeds  to  leave  their 
denominational  relations.  Accepting  the  figure,  the  inquiry 
is  suggested,  "  How  comes  Texas  to  be  so  proverbial  a 
refuge  as  to  make  the  allusion  significant.?"  Was  it  not  that, 
lying  between  the  United  States  and  Mexico,  it  suffered  the 
inconveniences  and  dangers  of  the  frontier,  being  open  to 
emigration  from  either  side  ?  Dr.  Channing  himself  ex- 
pressed great  apprehensions,  as  we  are  reminded,  in  regard 
to  its  annexation  to  the  Union,  lest  the  Union  should  be  it- 
self deteriorated. 

His  apprehensions  were  in  some  measure  realized,  but  yet 
were  perhaps  exaggerated  so  far  as  their  ultimate  results  are 
concerned  ;  for,  although  Texas  did  get  into  the  Union  some- 
what modified,  it  has  not  destroyed  the  Union,  and  it  has  a 
future  yet  before  it. 

Allusion  was  made  to  the  transcendental  element  which 
affected  theology  in  New  England.  If  I  remember  rightly, 
there  was  a  sentence  of  Dr.  Channing's  in  one  of  his  articles 
to  this  purport :  That  all  sects,  all  bodies  of  people,  have 
tried  too  much  to  define  their  religion ;  that  the  Infinite  is 
undefinable,  and  inaccessible  to  the  square,  the  compass,  and 
the  measuring  lines  of  logic ;  that  transcendentalism  which 
is  intellectual  is  but  a  counterfeit  and  a  mockery.  It  is  the 
cloud  without  the  glory,  thin,  cold,  and  life-destroying. 

But  there  is  a  transcendentalism  that  reaches  to  the 
Throne.  There  is  a  transcendentalism  in  which  life  grows 
and  thrives,  and  in  which  Dr.  Channing  himself  was  per- 
petually bathed.  The  dangers  of  scholasticism,  and  the 
damage  it  has  done,  he  did  not  overestimate ;  but  will  you 
permit  me  to  say  that  in  his  discussions,  it  seems  to  me,  he 


164  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

may  ha\e  opened  a  narrow  gap  at  least  toward  the  scholastic 
method,  in  meeting  subtlety  by  subtlety  in  the  attempt  at  an 
intellectual  counter-definition  of  the  Divine?  The  old  eccle- 
siastical enginery,  the  dungeon-houses,  the  instruments  of 
torture,  might  perhaps  better  have  been  burned  up  by  the 
fires  of  love  than  hammered  down  by  catapults  of  polemic 
discussion. 

But,  my  friends,  let  me  say  this, —  and  pardon  me  for 
having  detained  you  so  long, —  while  I  do  not  accept  Dr. 
Chanuing's  theology  so  far  as  formal  statements  are  con- 
cerned, and  while  I  am  not  therefore  a  Unitarian,  I  bow 
humbly  at  the  feet  of  the  man  whom  I  believe  to  have  been 
a  brave,  pure,  devout,  unselfish  worshipper  and  disciple  of 
the  Master  that  I  serve ;  and  I  greet  you  in  memory  of  the 
hour  in  which  he  was  born  ;  and  I  pray  God  that,  as  the 
years  go  on,  the  clash  of  war  and  the  strife  of  tongues,  and 
all  those  divisions  that  make  Christianity  to  mean  anarchy 
rather  than  a  kingdom,  may  be  overcome,  and  that  the 
shadows  may  flee  before  the  better  dawn  which  brings  the 
better  day,  in  which  distant  things  shall  be  seen  to  be  distant 
and  immeasurable,  in  which  friends  shall  not  be  mistaken  for 
enemies,  nor  enemies  for  friends.     [Applause.] 

The  Chairman.  —  That  was  a  voice  from  out  the  great 
Baptist  communion,  expressive  of  the  very  spirit  of  Roger 
Williams.  And  now  I  have  the  pleasure  of  introducing  to 
you,  from  another  large  and  powerful  denomination  which 
has  done  much  good  in  the  world,  which  has  had  great  suc- 
cess in  the  past,  and  which  we  hope  may  have  still  greater 
success  in  the  future,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Buckley  of  the  Hanson 
Place  Methodist  Church  of  this  city,  who  has  just  arrived, 
and  will  say  some  words  to  you. 


CELEBRATION    AT    BROOKLYN.  165 

EEMASZS  OF  REV.  DR.  J.  M.  BUCKLEY. 

Mr.  Chairman,  mid  Ladies  and  Gentlemen, —  I  am  not  doc- 
trinally  or  theologically  in  any  sense  in  sympathy  with  what 
are  distinctively  called  Unitarian  views.  The  gentlemen 
who  invited  me  to  speak  here  informed  me  that  I  would  be 
permitted  to  express  my  candid  estimate  of  the  life  and  work 
of  the  Rev.  William  Ellery  Channing ;  and  I  have  assumed 
that  it  is  possible  to  do  that  in  a  manner  that  shall  be  in  har- 
mony with  the  spirit  of  this  occasion. 

The  few  moments  that  I  shall  speak  will  be  devoted  to 
that  simple  statement.  Invited  at  a  late  hour,  I  should  not 
have  presumed  myself  competent  to  make  such  a  statement 
if  I  had  not,  ever  since  I  entered  the  ministry,  carefully  read 
and  studied  the  works  of  Dr.  Channing.  I  had  the  fortune 
to  begin  my  ministry  in  the  State  of  New  Hampshire  and 
the  town  of  Exeter,  the  site  of  Phillips  Academy,  within  a 
very  few  miles  of  Portsmouth,  where  at  that  time  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Peabody  was  an  honored  pastor.  The  system  to  which 
I  belong  rarely  trusts  a  minister,  in  his  earlier  stages,  very 
long  in  one  place.  Consequently,  after  having  had  the  op- 
portunity to  derive  all  the  good  I  could  from  the  people  of 
Exeter,  and  to  communicate  all  it  was  supposed  possible  that 
I  could  give,  I  was  removed  to  Dover ;  but  I  was  still  as 
near  Portsmouth  as  before. 

Now,  Dr.  Peabody  I  heard  preach  with  profound  respect ; 
and  I  was  led  to  believe,  when  I  heard  him,  that  the  differ- 
ence between  his  theological  views  and  mine  was  very  slight. 
But  when  I  removed  to  Dover,  where  there  was  a  very  large 
church  of  the  Unitarian  denomination,  I  found  the  incumbent 
of  that  church  a  very  different  man  theologically,  to  say  no 
more,  from  the  Rev.  Dr.  Peabody.  And  when  he  and  I  met 
on  the  School  Board, —  both  of  us  being  appointed  as  mem- 
bers of  that  Board,  according  to  the  custom  which  prevails  in 


l66  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

that  city.  —  wliilc  we  devoted  considerable  time  to  the  consid- 
eration of  matters  of  education,  as  required  at  our  hands  by 
the  law,  in  the  intervals  we  devoted  a  great  deal  more  time  to 
theological  debate  ;  and  I  found  that  the  difference  between 
him  and  me  was  so  vast  as  to  be  absolutely  irreconcilable.  In 
order  to  prepare  myself  to  convince  him  that  he  had  widely 
departed  from  the  doctrines  of  the  Unitarian  fathers,  I  pro- 
cured the  works  of  Dr.  Channing,  and  during  the  two  years  I 
spent  there  I  always  managed  to  have  a  quotation  ready  for 
him.  The  quotations  that  seemed  to  disturb  him  most  were 
those  in  which  Dr.  Channing  stated  that  the  death  of  Christ 
appeared  to  have  some  peculiar  and  special  relation  to  the 
pardon  of  sin.  I  was  familiar  with  those  passages.  I  could 
repeat  them  ;  and  I  assure  you  it  gave  me  a  great  deal  of  pleas- 
ure to  remind  my  radical  friend  of  those  words  of  Dr.  Chan- 
ning. And  while  I  was  studying  Dr.  Channing,  even  from  that 
somewhat  equivocal  point  of  view,  I  came  to  love  his  style 
very  much, —  not  the  less  so  because  I  saw  from  the  begin- 
ning that  I  should  never  be  able  to  imitate  its  clearness,  its 
beauty,  or  its  marvellous  balance. 

Now,  I  do  not  know  who  is  in  this  house ;  but  I  fancy  to 
myself  that  we  have  in  the  city  of  Brooklyn  a  clergyman 
whose  style  in  very  many  particulars  resembles  that  of  Dr. 
Channing.  I  refer  to  the  Rev.  Dr.  Storrs.  I  say  in  many 
partiadars.  I  do  not  for  a  moment  suppose  the  resemblance 
to  be  perfect ;  but  in  the  particular  of  the  marvellous  capacity 
to  illustrate  thought,  and  to  balance  every  part,  and  to  con- 
struct a  discourse  so  that  it  shall  resemble  a  symmetrical 
piece  of  architecture,  I  think  I  see  a  very  great  similarity. 
I  may  be  permitted  to  say  that  I  think  in  simplicity  Dr. 
Channing  surpassed  the  gentleman  to  whom  I  refer,  and 
almost  every  great  speaker  in  the  country  to-day.  I  do  not 
suppose  that  Dr.  Channing  as  a  public  speaker  would  have 
attracted  great  attention  in  the  South,  from  his  lack  of  a 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  1 67 

certain  kind  of  fervency,  or  in  the  West,  from  his  excess, 
relatively  to  the  attainments  in  that  region,  of  refinement ; 
but  in  New  England,  and  in  the  more  cultivated  circles  of 
the  Middle  States,  it  seems  to  me  Dr.  Channing's  style  was 
exactly  adapted  to  make  the  profoundest  impression.  I  have 
never  supposed  that  he  was  a  logician,  in  the  technical  sense 
of  that  term.  I  think  it  would  have  been  impossible  for  John 
Calvin  and  Dr.  Channing  to  converse  together  to  their  mu- 
tual satisfaction  and  edification,  entirely  apart  from  their 
doctrinal  views.  I  believe  that  John  Wesley  would  have 
considered  Dr.  Channing  a  genuine  Christian,  but  that  he 
would  not  have  been  able  to  argue  with  him.  John  Wesley 
was  a  dialectician  and  a  logician,  who  used  his  logic  as  a 
means  to  an  end,  to  prove  the  point  he  had  in  view  at  the 
time.  Dr.  Channing  —  and,  in  order  to  assure  you  that  I 
have  not  been  drawn  astray  in  my  former  reflections,  I  will 
say  that  I  have  spent  a  couple  of  hours  this  morning  in 
reading  his  selected  discourses  —  seems  to  me  to  have  been 
a  philosopher.  He  was,  however,  led  aside  by  a  poetic  ten- 
dency from  the  straight  lines  of  philosophy ;  and  it  appears 
to  me  that  he  was  not  as  logically  consistent  as  some  who 
would  go  further. 

Permit  me  a  single  word  here.  If  I  adopted  the  root  prin- 
ciples of  Dr.  Channing  himself,  I  fancy  that  my  tempera- 
ment, my  thoughts,  and  my  way  of  following  out  to  the  last 
results  what  I  seemed  to  myself  to  see,  would  take  me  a 
great  deal  further  than  he  went.  On  the  other  hand,  if  I 
had  such  a  pure  spirituality,  if  I  may  use  such  a  term,  as 
that  which  he  possessed,  but  which  I  lay  no  claim  to  by 
nature, —  and  I  say  nothing  in  this  presence  about  grace!  — 
I  fancy  that  my  temperament  would  not  lead  me  to  go  so  far 
as  he  did,  but  would  lead  me  rather  to  content  myself  with 
dwelling  in  the  regions  of  experience. 

Dr.  Channing  was  of  very  great  use  to  the  Methodists  in 


I 68  CHANNING   CENTENARY, 

tlio  folli)wing  manner.  He  iisctl  the  spleinlor  of  his  intellect 
against  Calvinism.  In  that  respect,  he  was  of  very  great 
benefit  to  us.  Our  entrance  into  New  England  was  under 
peculiar  circumstances.  Our  first  preacher  stood  on  Boston 
Common  and  lifted  up  his  voice.  No  church  was  opened  to 
receive  him  in  the  State  of  Massachusetts.  He  lifted  up  his 
voice  in  song.  He  understood  then  what  the  world  under- 
stands now, —  that  the  people  will  hear  a  singer  when  they 
will  not  hear  a  speaker.  Though  he  had  but  few  listeners  to 
begin  with,  his  powerful  voice,  singing  in  a  style  that  was 
not  known  in  that  part  of  the  country,  soon  attracted  a  vast 
concourse.  He  lifted  up  his  voice  like  a  trumpet  to  de- 
nounce Calvinism  ;  and  certainly  a  man  is  more  sure  when 
he  is  in  a  dogmatic  state  of  a  satisfactory  flow  of  speech  than 
when  he  depends  upon  the  changing  moods  of  feeling.  And 
he  created  a  great  excitement;  and,  when  he  waked  the 
people  up  to  understand  what  he  was  doing,  an  old  gentle- 
man came  forward,  and,  with  a  voice  as  loud  as  that  of  the 
speaker,  said,  "  Are  we  to  stand  on  Boston  Common  and 
hear  our  foundation  principles  attacked  .^  "  They  all  agreed 
they  were  not  there  for  that  purpose ;  and,  as  in  the  case  of 
Paul  on  Mars  Hill,  some  said  they  would  hear  him  again,  and 
others  said,  "What  doth  this  babbler  say  .-* " 

Such  was  our  entrance  into  New  England,  and  we  could 
not  do  much  for  a  long  time;  but  Dr.  Channing  used  the 
splendor  of  his  intellect  and  his  marvellous  influence,  and 
fought  our  battles,  so  far  as  Calvinism  was  concerned. 

Now,  Mr.  Chairman,  if,  in  the  complacency  which  is  a 
part  of  our  denominational  life,  growing  out  of  our  great 
success,  we  felicitate  ourselves  on  having  the  sense  and 
grace  to  stop  a  little  this  side  of  Dr.  Channing's  final  point, 
we  should  not  be  blamed  for  that.  We  appreciate  the  work 
he  did  in  assisting  us  in  our  protest  against  Calvinism.  And 
if  he  were  alive  to-day,  and  were  to  apply  for  admission  into 


I 
I 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  169 

our  church  as  a  layman,  I,  standing  here  as  a  warrior  upon 
the  walls  of  Zion,  would  vote  for  the  admission  of  a  man  of 
God,  a  patriot,  a  philanthropist,  a  friend  of  temperance,  a 
friend  of  his  country,  a  friend  of  the  laboring  classes,  and  a 
friend  of  all  good  men ;  but  candor  requires  me  to  say  that, 
if  he  were  to  apply  for  admission  into  our  ministry,  while  I 
should  rejoice  to  recognize  him  as  a  friend  of  humanity,  and, 
I  will  say  with  Brother  Thomas,  as  a  friend  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  and  as  one  whose  influence  in  many  particu- 
lars has  promoted  the  interests  of  the  kingdom  of  Christ  in 
the  world,  especially  in  this  country,  I  am  afraid,  sir,  that 
logical  consistency  would  compel  me  to  raise  some  points, 
the  final  effect  of  which  might  be  to  delay  or  embarrass  his 
entrance  into  the  ministry. 

This,  Mr.  Chairman,  is  my  candid  opinion  of  the  life  and 
work  of  Dr.  Channing.  I  rejoice  that  he  has  lived.  I 
acknowledge  my  indebtedness  to  him.  I  do  not  positively 
know  that  even,  from  my  point  of  view,  his  influence  has 
been  deleterious  to  the  progress  of  Christ's  kingdom  in  the 
world.  But  his  principles  were  not  mine.  I  cannot  accept 
his  views  ;  and  therefore  I  simply  would  honor  him  as  a 
great  factor  in  American  civilization,  and  befleve  that  every 
citizen  of  the  United  States,  in  making  a  list  of  the  men 
of  influence  and  of  power  that  our  country  has  produced,  is 
compelled,  with  delight  and  admiration,  to  include  among 
the  foremost  the  name  of  William  Ellery  Channing.  [Ap- 
plause.] 

Ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  am  very  much  obliged  to  you  for 
the  opportunity  of  speaking  to-day,  and  for  the  attention 
which  you  have  given  me. 

The  Chairman. —  We  are  glad,  you  see,  to  have  the  freest 
utterances  of  members  of  different  communions.  We  pro- 
pose to  have  the  greatest  possible  variety.    And  so,  having 


170  CHANNING   CENTENARY. 

heard  from  our  friend  Dr.  Ihomas,  of  the  Baptist  Church, 
and  our  friend  Dr.  Buckley,  of  the  Methodist  Church,  not  to 
take  too  large  a  leap  at  once,  I  will  call  upon  our  friend  Mr. 
Chadwick  to  offer  some  remarks  and  read  us  his  Centennial 
Ode. 

KEMARZS  OF  REV.  J.  W.  CHADWICK. 

Ladies  and  Gentletneji, —  You  are  well  aware,  no  doubt, 
that,  in  making  the  preparations  for  this  noble  and  beautiful 
occasion,  Dr.  Putnam  has  said  to  one  man,  "  Go,"  and  he 
goeth,  and  to  another,  "Come,"  and  he  cometh,  and  to  a 
third,  "  Do  this,"  and  he  doeth  it ;  and,  when  he  said  to  me, 
"  Go  you  and  couch  the  words  you  have  to  say  in  a  sort  of 
rhyme  and  rhythm,"  I  did  just  as  he  told  me.  But  for  Dr. 
Putnam's  commands,  I  should  not  presume  to  vary  from  my 
ordinary  form  of  speech  ;  but,  as  it  is,  I  am  to  read  to  you  a 
kind  of  hymn,  or  ode,  on  The  Hundredth  Anni'^ersary  of 
Channing's  Birthday  :  — 

CENTENNIAL  ODE. 

iW  hundred  years  ago  to-day  I 

How  often  in  this  latter  time, 

In  fond  memorial  speech  or  rhyme. 
Has  it  been  ours  these  words  to  say! 

A  hundred  years  to-day,  we  said, 

Since  Concord  bridge  and  Lexington 

Saw  the  great  struggle  well  begun 
And  the  first  heroes  lying  dead. 

A  hundred  years  since  Bunker  Hill 

Saw  the  red-coated  foemen  reel 

Once  and  again  before  the  steel 
Of  Prescott's  men,  victorious  still 

In  their  defeat ;  a  hundred  years 

Since  Independence-bell  rang  out 

To  all  the  people  round  about, 
Who  answered  it  with  deafening  cheers, 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  I7I 

Proclaiming,  spite  the  scorner's  scorn, 

That  then  and  there  —  the  womb  of  time 

Through  sufferance  triumphing  sublime  — 
Another  nation  had  been  born. 

"All  men  are  equal  in  their  birth," 

Rang  out  the  steeple-rocking  bell ; 

Rejoice,  O  heaven  I     Give  heed,  O  helll 
Here  was  good  news  to  all  the  earth. 

And  still  our  hearts  have  kept  the  count 

Of  things  that  daily  brought  more  near, 

Through  various  hap  of  hope  or  fear, 
The  pattern  visioned  in  the  mount. 

Nor  yet  the  tale  is  fully  told 

Of  all  the  years  that  brought  us  pain, 

And  through  the  age  of  iron  again 
The  dawning  of  the  age  of  gold. 


But  naught  of  this  has  brought  us  here, 
With  the  old  saying  on  our  lips, 
What  time  the  rolling  planet  dips 

Into  the  spring-tide  of  the  year. 

Apart  from  all  the  dire  alarms 
Of  field  or  flood  in  that  old  time, 
With  reverent  feet  our  fancies  climb 

To  where  a  mother's  circling  arms 

Enraptured  hold  a  babe  new  born ; 
And  who  was  there  to  prophesy, 
Though  loving  hearts  beat  strong  and  high. 

Of  what  a  day  this  was  the  morn  t 

For  in  that  life  but  just  begun 
The  prescient  fates  a  gift  had  bound 
As  dear  to  man  as  any  found 

Within  the  courses  of  the  sun, — 

A  gift  of  manhood  strong  and  wise, 
Nor  foreign  to  the  lowliest  earth  — 
Whereon  the  Word  has  human  birth  — 

Ilowc'er  conversant  with  the  skies. 


A  hundred  years  ago  to-day 
Since  Channing's  individual  life 
From  out  the  depths  of  being,  rife 

With  spiritual  essence,  found  a  way, 


172  CHANNING    CENTENARY, 

And  welcome  here,  ami  torccs  kind 
To  gently  nurse  his  growing  power 
With  steady  help  until  the  flower 

Of  instinct  was  a  conscious  mind. 

To  him  the  sea  its  message  brought, 
Filling  his  mind  with  sacred  awe 
What  time  his  eye  enraptured  saw 

Its  wildest  tumult;  or  he  caught 

From  its  deep  calm  some  peace  of  heart ; 
To  him  the  ages  brought  their  lore 
Of  books,  and  living  men  their  store 

Of  thought,  and  still  the  better  part 

Of  all  his  nurture  was  the  eye 
Turned  inward,  seeking  in  the  mind 
Some  higher,  deeper  law  to  find 

Than  that  which  spheres  the  starry  sky. 


And  so  the  youth  to  manhood  came, 
A  being  frail  —  with  nameless  eyes, 
That  seemed  to  look  on  Paradise  — 

As  clear  as  dew,  as  clean  as  flame. 

He  willed  in  quiet  to  abide, 
Leading  his  flock  through  pastures  green 
And  by  the  waters  still,  where  lean 

The  mystic  trees  on  either  side. 

But  on  his  listening  ear  there  fell 
The  jarring  discord  of  the  sects. 
Still  making  with  their  war  of  texts 

The  pleasant  earth  a  kind  of  hell. 

He  saw  the  Father's  sacrtd  name 
Made  dim  by  Calvary's  suffering  rood ; 
Man  devil-born  —  a  spawning  flood, 

Engendering  naught  but  curse  and  shame. 

He  saw  the  freedom  of  the  mind 

Denied,  and  doubt  esteemed  a  crime  ;  — 
The  path  whereby  the  boldest  climb 

To  heights  which  cowards  never  find. 

He  saw  the  manhood  which  to  him 
Was  image  of  the  highest  God 
Trodden  as  if  it  were  a  clod 

'Neath  Slavery's  idol-chariot  grim. 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  1 73 

lie  saw  it  fouled  with  various  sin, 

Sick'ning  from  lack  of  air  and  light, 

Abjuring  glories  infinite 
To  fatten  at  the  sensual  bin. 

He  heard  and  saw ;  his  shepherd's  rod 

With  grieving  heart  he  broke  in  twain  ; 

The  wondering  world  beheld  again 
A  prophet  of  the  living  God. 

Then,  as  of  old,  was  heard  a  voice : 

"His  way  prepare,"  and  "Come  with  me, 

All  ye  that  heavy-laden  be, 
Take  up  my  burden,  and  rejoice." 

It  rang  through  all  the  sleepy  land 

In  tones  so  sweet  and  silver  clear 

The  waking  people  seemed  to  hear 
The  accents  of  divine  command. 

The  statesman  heard  it  in  his  place. 

The  oppressor  in  his  cursed  field, 

And  hearts  beyond  the  ocean  yield 
Allegiance  to  his  truth  and  grace. 

Our  Father,  God;  our  Brother,  Man: 

On  these  commandments  twain  he  hung 

The  law  and  prophets  all,  and  rung 
For  all  the  churches'  eager  ban 

A  hundred  changes  deep  and  strong; 

Let  who  would  hear  him  or  forbear. 

The  ancient  lie  he  would  not  spare, 
The  doubtful  right,  the  vested  wrong. 

What  words  were  his  of  purest  flame 

When,  straining  up  from  height  to  height. 

He  felt  the  Presence  infinite 
And  named  the  Everlasting  Name  I 

With  him  the  thought  and  deed  were  one : 

Man  was  indeed  the  Son  of  God ; 

"  What,  strike  a  man !  "  *     Break  every  rod 
Of  hate  beneath  the  all-seeing  sun  I 

So  greatly  born,  how  dare  to  trail 

Our  festal  garlands  in  the  mire  I 

How  dare  not  evermore  aspire 
To  Him  who  is  within  the  veil  I 


•  Hi»  argument  against  flogging  in  the  Navy. 


174  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

In  weakness  iiuulc  cacli  day  more  strong, 
Softly  his  days  went  trooping  past 
Till,  robed  in  beauty,  came  the  last, 

And  with  the  sun  he  went  along; 

Not  to  oblivion's  dreamless  sleep, 
But,  like  the  sun,  on  other  lands 
To  shine,  where  other,  busier  hands 

The  fields  immortal  sow  and  reap. 


And  he  is  ours  1  Yes,  if  we  dare, 
Leaving  the  letter  of  his  creed. 
Say  to  his  mighty  spirit,  "  Lead, 

We  follow  hard."     Yes,  if  no  care 

Is  ours  for  aught  but  this  :  to  know 
What  is  God's  truth,  and  knowing  this 
To  count  it  still  our  dearest  bliss 

To  go  with  that  where'er  it  go. 

So  shall  we  go  with  him ;  so  feel 
That  comfort  which  the  Spirit  of  Truth 
Gives  all  who  with  his  loving  ruth 

Are  pledged  to  her  for  woe  or  weal. 


O  thou  whom,  though  we  have  not  seen. 

We  love!     Upon  our  toilsome  way 

Be  thy  pure  spirit  as  a  ray 
From  out  that  Light  which  is  too  clean 

Uncleanness  to  behold  ;  shine  clear. 

That  to  our  dimly  peering  eyes 

All  hidden  truths,  all  specious  lies. 
That  which  they  are  may  straight  appear. 

There  is  no  ending  to  thy  road. 

No  limit  to  thy  fleeting  goal. 

But  speeds  the  ever-greatening  soul 
From  truth  to  truth,  from  God  to  God. 

[Applause.] 

The  Chairman. —  Mr.  Oliver  Johnson  was  in  the  earliest 
fight  with  William  Lloyd  Garrison  against  slavery,  and  we 
deem  ourselves  fortunate  to  have  him  here  this  morning; 
for  he  knows   something  about  Dr.  Channing's   connection 


CELEBRATION    AT    BROOKLYN.  1^5 

with  that  movement,  and  had  the  great  pleasure  and  privi- 
lege of  listening  to  some  of  Dr.  Channing's  famous  public 
discourses,  as  published  in  his  works.  Mr.  Johnson  will  now 
address  you. 

EEMAEZS  OF  ME.  OLIVER  JOHNSON. 

Mr.  Johnson. —  I  feel  myself  very  highly  honored  in  being 
invited  to  say  a  few  words  on  this  occasion.  I  have  the 
greatest  reverence  for  the  memory  of  Charining.  My  ac- 
quaintance with  him  was  indeed  but  slight.  When  I  went 
to  Boston,  as  a  boy,  in  1830,  I  used  often  to  see  him  in  the 
street.  His  figure  was  familiar  to  me ;  but  that  was  the  time 
as  you  all  remember  —  or  at  least  as  you  all  knoiv,  if  you  are 
not  old  enough  to  remember  —  when  the  great  controversy 
between  Orthodoxy  and  Unitarian  ism  in  Boston  was  at  its 
height, —  Dr.  Beecher  the  great  leader  of  Orthodoxy,  and 
Dr.  Channing  the  great  leader  of  Unitarianism.  I  was  then 
an  intensely  earnest  orthodox  man.  I  had  united  with  the 
church  a  few  years  before,  and  was  looking  forward  to  the 
Christian  ministry ;  and  I  was  told  by  those  around  me,  in 
whom  I  had  the  utmost  confidence,  that  Unitarianism  was 
infidelity,  or  something  not  much  better  than  that.  There- 
fore, when  I  first  came  in  contact  with  Dr.  Channing,  I  was 
under  the  influence  of  very  strong  prejudice, —  not  against 
him  personally,  however,  except  as  he  was  the  representa- 
tive of  Unitarianism. 

It  was  not  a  great  while  after  this  that  the  first  Anti- 
slavery  Society  —  the  parent  of  all  that  great  circle  of  asso- 
ciations which  agitated  this  land  nearly  fifty  years  ago,  and 
which  prepared  the  way  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  our 
country  —  was  organized  in  Boston  ;  and,  in  the  preliminary 
meetings  which  we  held  to  consider  the  question  of  organ- 
izing that  society,  I  met  the  noble  man  [Samuel  E.  Sewall] 


176  CHANNING    CKNTENAKY. 

wiioiic  letter  has  just  been  read,  then  one  of  the  young  men 
of  Channing's  congregation ;  and  I  said  to  myself,  "  Now  I 
shall  see  what  Unitarianism  is."  I  never  shall  forget  the 
strong  prejudice  with  which  I  came  in  contact  with  that 
young  man,  and  with  another  equally  noble,  Mr.  Ellis  Gray 
Loring,  also  a  member  of  Dr.  Channing's  congregation.  I 
expected  to  find  those  men  destitute  of  a  Christian  spirit. 
I  supposed  I  should  hear,  when  they  opened  their  lips,  some 
utterance  of  infidelity.  I  believed  with  all  my  heart  that 
figs  could  not  grow  upon  thistles  ;  and,  as  I  had  been  told 
that  Unitarianism  was  a  thistle,  I  was  looking  out  for  some- 
thing very  bad  to  come  from  these  men.  But,  when  I  wit- 
nessed their  Christian  deportment  and  their  firm  attachment 
to  the  truth,  I  felt  rebuked  for  my  presumption ;  and  I  began 
to  open  my  eyes,  and  to  ask  whether,  after  all,  I  had  not 
been  misinformed,  and  whether  it  was  not  possible  for  a 
good  man  to  come  up  under  the  influence  of  Unitarianism. 
And  let  me  say  that  I  was  not  long  in  correcting  the  error 
into  which  I  had  fallen.  In  the  Christian  character  of  those 
two  men  was  revealed  to  me  the  spirit  of  Channing  and  of 
Unitarianism. 

It  was  my  privilege  to  hear  Channing  preach  but  once, 
and  then  I  listened  with  orthodox  ears.  It  was  on  the  occa- 
sion of  the  delivery  of  his  "Election  Sermon"  in  1832,  which 
will  be  found  in  his  works  under  the  title  of  "  Spiritual  Free- 
dom." It  is  certainly  one  of  the  finest  of  his  discourses. 
He  addressed  the  "assembled  wisdom"  of  the  Common- 
wealth in  that  historic  place,  the  Old  South  Church.  I 
recall  the  scene  now  as  freshly  as  if  it  were  only  yesterday 
that  it  occurred.  As  he  spake,  he  held  his  manuscript  in  his 
left  hand,  and  his  voice,  though  gentle  as  a  woman's,  filled 
the  house.  How  vividly  I  recall  his  utterance  of  this  strik- 
ing passage,  which  will  live  while  the  English  language  con- 
tinues to  be  spoken  !  — 

I  call  that  mind  free  which  jealously  guards  its  intellectual  rights  and 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  177 

powers,  which  calls  no  man  master,  which  does  not  content  itself  with  a 
passive  or  hereditary  faith,  which  opens  itself  to  light  whencesoever  it 
may  come,  which  receives  new  truth  as  an  angel  from  heaven,  which, 
while  consulting  others,  inquires  still  more  of  the  oracle  within  itself, 
and  uses  instructions  from  abroad,  not  to  supersede,  but  to  quicken  and 
exalt  its  own  energies. 

The  exquisite  intonation  and  emphasis  with  which  this 
and  other  passages  of  the  discourse  were  read  made  a  deep 
impression  upon  my  youthful  mind. 

Dr.  Channing  at  first  kept  aloof  from  the  abolitionists, 
partly  because  of  the  intense  individualism  which  led  him 
to  distrust  all  organized  movements,  and  partly  because  our 
bold  and  uncompromising  utterances  grated  harshly  upon  his 
sensitive  —  may  I  not  say  his  over-sensitive  .■'  —  ear.  He 
could  not  well  bear  the  noise  of  the  ecclesiastical  machinery 
by  means  of  which  his  own  religious  thoughts  were  sent 
forth  to  the  world.  He  shrank  from  being  called  an  aboli- 
tionist, partly  from  the  same  feeling  which  led  him  to  say,  "  I 
have  little  or  no  interest  in  the  Unitarians  as  a  sect ;  I  have 
hardly  anything  to  do  with  them  ;  I  can  endure  no  sectarian 
bonds."  He  stood  for  himself  in  all  things.  The  abolition- 
ists were  exceedingly  unpopular;  and  he  probably  thought  he 
should  gain  a  more  favorable  hearing  if  he  magnified  some- 
what the  differences  between  them  and  himself.  But  he  did 
not  by  this  means  escape  the  brand  of  abolitionist.  The 
whole  pro-slavery  party  stamped  it  upon  him,  hurling  at  his 
head  every  epithet  that  they  had  bestowed  upon  Garrison. 
The  good  doctor,  notwithstanding  his  clear  moral  insight, 
was  slow  in  accepting  the  doctrine  of  immediate  emancipa- 
tion. He  was  not  quite  sure  that  it  would  be  safe  to  set  all 
the  slaves  free  at  once.  The  results  of  emancipation  in  the 
British  West  Indies  convinced  him  at  last,  as  his  Lenox  ad- 
dress proves.  He  thought  that  a  great  sin  did  not  neces- 
sarily imply  great  sinners,  and   he  had  somehow    persuaded 


\yS  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

himself  that  there  was  a  way  of  touching  off  an  anti-slavery 
gun,  and  a  well-loaded  one  too,  "aisily,"  as  the  Irishman 
said,  without  making  a  disturbance.  Experience  soon  cor- 
rected this  mistake  on  his  part.  The  reverberations  of  his 
own  gun,  so  gently  discharged  as  he  thought,  startled  thou- 
sands from  their  sleep,  and  made  the  slave-holders  and  their 
apologists  angry.  The  abolitionists,  it  must  be  confessed, 
did  not  relish  his  criticisms,  and  paid  him  back  in  his  own 
coin.  The  account  was  long  ago  settled;  and  they  have  no 
unpleasant  memories,  but  are  glad  to  honor  him  for  his  noble 
and  timely  testimony.  His  agreements  with  them  were  cen- 
tral and  vital,  his  differences  but  incidental  and  transient. 
Nor  should  it  be  forgotten  that  he  bore  with  meekness  a  load 
of  reproach,  such  as  fell  to  the  lot  only  of  the  bravest  and 
truest  champions  of  the  slave.  Even  in  his  own  parish,  his 
message  was  unheeded,  save  by  a  few.  When  he  asked  that 
the  doors  of  his  church  might  be  opened  for  a  eulogy  upon 
his  beloved  friend,  Dr.  Pollen,  a  warm-hearted  abolitionist, 
to  be  pronounced  by  another  dear  friend,  the  late  Samuel 
J.  May,  they  were  rudely  shut  in  his  face.  In  this  and  many 
other  ways,  he  was  made  to  feel  that  his  testimony  against 
slavery  had  greatly  impaired  his  reputation.  But  he  neither 
wavered  nor  turned  back.  His  voice  grew  clearer  and 
stronger  to  the  end. 

When  in  1837  Elijah  P.  Lovejoy  was  murdered  at  Alton, 
and  the  liberty  of  the  press  struck  down  by  violence,  Chan- 
ning  was  the  first  man  in  Boston  to  seek  to  bring  the  people 
of  that  city  to  a  sense  of  the  importance  of  speaking  out 
against  that  outrage.  It  was  through  his  influence  that  a 
great  meeting  was  held  in  Faneuil  Hall,  and  held  —  let  me 
say  it  to  the  shame  of  Boston — in  the  daytime,  because  we 
dared  not  hold  it  in  the  evening,  knowing  that  it  would 
be  broken  up  by  a  mob.  His  friend  Jonathan  Phillips,  the 
senior  deacon  of  his  church,  took  the  chair.     I  shall  never 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  1/9 

forget  the  appearance  of  Dr.  Charming  as  he  presented  him- 
self in  that  meeting.  His  face  was  all  aglow  with  solemn 
earnestness,  his  voice  tremulous  with  emotion,  his  whole 
attitude  and  bearing  that  of  a  prophet  with  a  message  from 
God.  He  spoke  briefly,  but  eloquently.  There  followed 
him  into  that  meeting  a  distinguished  lawyer  of  Boston,  a 
member  of  his  own  congregation,  James  T.  Austin,  Esq., 
who  sprang  to  his  feet  the  moment  the  doctor's  speech  was 
concluded,  and,  intruding  himself  upon  the  audience,  uttered 
a  most  disgraceful  harangue,  which  he  doubtless  thought 
would  have  the  effect  of  breaking  up  the  meeting.  For  a 
time  there  seemed  to  be  reason  to  fear  that  he  would 
succeed  in  his  purpose ;  but,  under  the  inspiring  eloquence 
of  Phillips,  all  such  apprehensions  were  soon  averted.  The 
voice  of  that  meeting  went  forth  to  cheer  the  friends  of 
freedom  all  over  the  land. 

Once,  and  once  only,  did  I  have  a  personal  interview  with 
Channing;  but  that  to  me  was  memorable.  It  was  at  his 
home  in  Portsmouth,  near  Newport,  in  1838  or  1839.  ^  "^^^ 
then  the  secretary  and  general  agent  of  the  Rhode  Island 
Anti-slavery  Society,  and  I  eagerly  embraced  an  opportunity 
to  visit  him.  He  received  me  with  a  gracious  sweetness  and 
dignity  that  I  shall  never  forget,  and  his  counsel,  modestly 
given,  was  most  cheering  and  helpful.  In  that  day,  the  anti- 
slavery  lecturer  was  often  called  to  face  a  mob.  More  than 
once  had  the  tar-kettle  been  heated  for  me,  and  the  garment 
of  feathers  woven  for  my  behoof.  In  such  circumstances,  the 
words  of  Channing  gave  me  fresh  courage. 

There  are  not  many  persons,  if  there  is  even  a  single  one, 
•in  this  house,  who,  like  myself,  witnessed  the  funeral  rites 
of  Channing,  and  looked  upon  his  placid,  I  had  almost  said 
his  seraphic,  face  in  death.  One  circumstance  connected 
with  that  funeral  ought  to  be  mentioned.  Some  years  be- 
fore, when  the   good    Catholic   Bishop  Cheverus  died,  and 


I  So  CHANNING    CENTENARY, 

funeral  services  were  held  in  the  "Church  of  the  Holy 
Cross,"  the  boll  on  the  Federal  Street  Church  was  tolled  by 
Dr.  Channing's  particular  request,  as  a  token  of  respect  for 
his  memory.  The  Catholics  did  not  forget  it ;  and  now  the 
boll  on  the  "Church  of  the  Holy  Cross"  in  Franklin  Street 
pealed  forth  a  requiem  in  honor  of  an  uncanonized  but  truly 
catholic  saint. 

In  conclusion,  dear  friends,  —  for  I  have  spoken  too  long 
—  I  will  say,  Let  us,  in  honoring  a  prophet  of  the  past,  not 
forget  to  honor  and  love  the  prophets  of  our  own  time,  — 
the  true  messengers  of  God,  who  live  and  move  among  us  ! 
[Applause.] 

The  Chairman.  —  We  would  ask  the  audience  to  rise  and 
sing,  to  the  tune  of  "America,"  the  first  and  the  last  two 
stanzas,  on  the  printed  slip,  of  the  Memorial  Hymn  for  the 
Centennial  Anniversary,  written  for  this  occasion  by  the 
venerable  Dr.  William  Newell,  of  Cambridge,  Mass.,  who  had 
some  personal  acquaintance  with  Dr.  Channing,  and  who  has 
-also  sent  us  a  letter,  which  will  be  published  with  others  that 
have  been  received,  but  which  cannot  all  be  read  now  for 
lack  of  time. 

MEMOKIAL  HYMN. 

By  EEV.  WM.  NEWELL,  D.D. 

And  now  abideth  Faith,  Hope,  Charity. —  I.  Cor.  xiii.,  13. 
Charity  rejoiceth  in  the  Truth. —  I.  CoR.  xiii.,  6. 
And  the  Truth  shall  make  you  free. —  John  viii.,  32. 

All  hail,  God's  angel,  Truth  I 
In  whose  immortal  youth 

Fresh  graces  shine : 
To  her  sweet  majesty, 
Lord,  help  us  bend  the  knee, 
And  all  her  beauty  see, 

And  wealth  divine. 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  151 

Thanks  for  the  might  of  Faith, 
That  fears  not  change  or  death 

Under  God's  care; 
Bringing  the  distant  nigh 
To  the  soul's  quickened  eye, 
And  soaring  to  the  sky 

On  wings  of  prayer. 

Thanks  for  the  light  of  Hope, 
As  through  the  mist  we  grope 

Toward  heaven's  far  goal ; 
On  each  dark  cloud  it  shines, 
Illuming  God's  designs 
"Where  ill  with  good  combines 

To  round  the  whole. 

Thanks  for  the  heart  of  Love, 
Kin  to  our  Lord's  above, 

Tender  and  brave ; 
Ready  to  bear  the  cross, 
To  suffer  pain  and  loss 
And  earthly  good  count  dross. 

In  toils  to  save. 

Thanks  for  the  names  that  light 
The  path  of  Truth  and  Right, 

And  Freedom's  way ; 
For  him  whose  life  doth  prove 
The  might  of  Faith,  Hope,  Love, 
Thousands  of  hearts  to  move, 

A  power  to-day  I 

May  his  dear  memory  be 
True  guide,  O  Lord,  to  thee. 

With  saints  of  yore ; 
And  may  the  work  he  wrought, 
The  truth  of  God  he  taught. 
The  good  for  man  he  sought. 

Spread  evermore. 

The  Chairman. —  We  are  very  glad  to  see  present  with  us 
Dr.  Hall,  Rector  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity  in  this 
city.  We  all  know  his  large  and  liberal  spirit,  and  need  not 
to  be  assured  beforehand  of  his  interest  in  such  an  occasion 
as  this.  I  know  he  will  respond  to  our  call  upon  him,  and 
that  you  will  all  rejoice  to  hear  him. 


I  82  CHANNING    CENTENARY, 

REMARKS  OF  CHARLES  H.  HALL,  D.D. 

It  is  a  long  time  since  I  have  felt  so  great  an  anxiety  as  I 
do  now  to  speak,  or  so  profound  a  conviction  that  to  do  so 
would  be  an  impropriety.  You  must  be  talked  out  by  this 
time.  I  should  be  very  glad  if  I  had  time  to  follow  out  one 
idea,  which  of  course  it  would  be  simply  impossible  to  follow 
out  at  this  time ;  namely,  the  place  of  Channing  in  the  his- 
tory of  our  various  faiths  as  they  are  related  to  us  to-day. 
I  must,  then,  only  touch  the  salient  points. 

We  drop  from  a  man's  name  after  he  is  dead,  if  he  has 
been  good  for  anything,  his  ordinary  Christian  titles  and  the 
honorary  degrees  that  he  may  have  picked  up  and  carried  as 
a  burden  along  the  path  of  life ;  and  therefore  I  speak  of 
him  whose  memory  we  celebrate  to-day  simply  by  his  one 
name,  Channing. 

It  is  claimed  that  Channing  was  a  Unitarian ;  but,  in  the 
graveyard  where  he  sleeps,  denominational  lines  are  wholly 
lost  sight  of.  Although,  according  to  the  vicious  habit 
which  prevails  in  Greenwood,  and  I  presume  in  Mount  Au- 
burn, they  may  put  chains  about  the  lots,  and  build  up 
stone-walls  around  them,  and  erect  hideous  structures  that 
make  the  place  unsightly,  and  take  away  all  natural  beauty 
from  it,  yet  under  ground  there  are  no  distinctions.  And 
in  the  blessed  shrines  of  the  Church  of  Souls  above  it  there 
are  none.  There,  I  presume,  "all  hearts  confess  the  saints 
elect."  The  value  of  Channing  to  every  one  of  us,  whether 
he  was  a  Unitarian  or  a  Baptist  or  a  Presbyterian  or  a 
Methodist  or  an  Episcopalian,  or  what  not,  is  simply  very 
precious.  He  did  manfully  the  work  which  was  given  him 
to  do. 

When  the  Puritans  came  to  this  country  in  1620,  it  was 
a  tremendous  change  for  John,  the  Puritan.  Being  perse- 
cuted, he  came  over  here  to  be  a  persecutor.     He  did  not 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  1 83 

persecute  more  than  others,  but  he  did  something  in  that 
bad  way.  I  hide  under  the  name  of  Prescott,  who  says  that 
he  came  hither  to  establish  religious  liberty  for /^m.$-^^, —  not, 
as  it  proved,  for  all  other  men  as  well.  He  came  over  here 
to  assume  a  totally  new  relation.  He  came  over  here  with 
the  tremendous  gift  of  Calvinism,  and  it  is  an  awful  gift  for 
any  man  to  bear  ! 

I  reverence  old  John  Calvin,  while  I  differ  with  him, 
though  perhaps  not  so  much  in  his  ultimate  thought.  That 
ultimate  thought  in  his  system,  as  I  look  at  it,  was,  with 
such  doctrinal  materials  as  he  found  ready  to  his  hands,  to 
assert  the  superiority  of  an  illuminated  personal  conscience 
against  the  tyranny  of  an  objective  sacerdotal  church.  I 
do  not  know  that  I  differ  with  anybody  in  the  ultimate 
thought.  I  reverence  him  as  I  do  great  names  in  my  own 
Church,  whom  I  estimate,  not  so  much  by  what  they  did  as 
by  the  spirit  which  was  in  their  hearts. 

Well,  the  Puritans  had  had  persecutions  to  keep  them  to- 
gether in  England,  and  they  came  over  here  to  be  governors, 
constructors,  and  builders.     They  had  a  tremendous  work. 

Singularly  enough,  the  first  difficulty  which  they  encoun- 
tered was  in  regard  to  the  sacrament.  The  first  great  press- 
ure that  bore  upon  them  was  the  sacramental  question, 
though  it  did  not  take  precisely  that  definite  form. 

John,  the  deacon's  son,  when  he  came  to  be  of  age,  was 
to  be  a  voter;  and  Sally,  the  daughter  of  the  other  deacon 
across  the  way,  was  to  be  married  to  John.  And  the  ques- 
tion came  up  as  to  what  should  be  their  relations  —  civil  and 
ecclesiastical  —  to  the  village  and  to  the  Church.  John  said, 
"  I  love  the  meeting,  I  love  the  deacons,  I  love  the  whole 
thing,  and  I  believe  all  you  say ;  but  I  have  not  been  struck 
by  lightning,  I  have  not  had  that  which  every  one  of  the 
members  say  they  have  had." 

Under   oppression,    they   had    been   driven   in    upon   the 


iS-l  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

centre,  and  they  remained  as  one  body  ;  but  the  attempt  to 
settle  the  questions  how  Sally's  children  should  be  baptized, 
and  how  John  should  be  allowed  to  be  a  voter  and  a  civil 
officer,  agitated  New  England  up  to  the  time  when  old  Dr. 
Samuel  Stoddard,  of  Northampton,  having  at  last  lost  faith 
in  the  old  device  of  "the  half-way  covenant,"  struck  out  a 
most  peculiar  sacramental  idea,  which  our  ritualistic  friends 
in  my  section  of  the  Church  are  to-day  striving  to  fructify 
upon ;  namely,  that,  though  no  man  could  put  himself  where 
the  lightning  is  going  to  strike,  yet  by  the  sacraments  he 
could  get  where  he  ought  to  be  in  case  the  lightning  did 
strike.  Dr.  Stoddard,  in  his  "Appeal  to  the  Learned,"  in 
1705,  wrote  an  admirable  tract,  a  copy  of  which  you  will 
find  in  the  Yale  College  Library.  He  adopted  a  system 
of  reasoning  on  the  sacrament  to  the  effect  that,  while  the 
sacrament  would  not  give  an  individual  the  conviction  of  his 
personal  election,  it  was  a  means  to  that  grace  ;  and  that, 
therefore,  John  and  Sally,  and  all  such,  should  take  it,  if  they 
would  promise  to  put  themselves  where  the  elective  decree 
ordinarily  came  to  an  issue. 

That  device  became  the  acknowledged  system  of  church 
membership  of  Northampton,  when  Jonathan  Edwards,  that 
magnificently  terrible  man,  whom  none  of  us  can  honor  or 
differ  from  too  much,  came  to  be  the  assistant  minister  of 
his  maternal  grandfather.  Dr.  Stoddard. 

Now  we  are  all  Unitarians,  Presbyterians,  and  good  fel- 
lows together  here  to-day ;  and  we  all  have  in  our  hearts,  I 
suppose,  about  what  that  grand  man,  the  young  Edwards,  — 
and  I  honor  and  love  his  memory  almost  as  much  as  if  I 
had  known  him, —  felt,  when  finding,  as  I  think  he  was  cor- 
rect in  concluding  he  found,  that  that  system  must  go  down 
unless  it  could  be  saved  from  its  own  works,  he  struck  out 
the  idea  that,  at  whatever  cost,  every  man  must  stand  on 
his  sense  of  divine  manhood,  illuminated  by  the  thought  of 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  1 85 

the  election  of  God,  with  no  compromise  or  "  halt-way  cove- 
nant." With  the  most  rigid  Calvinism, —  more  rigid  than 
the  platforms  of  Cambridge  and  Boston  and  Saybrook,  and 
more  rigid  even  than  the  Westminster  Catechism, —  he  at- 
tempted to  carry  out  that  "revival"  system,  as  it  is  now 
called,  which  shook  New  England  to  the  centre.  Just  then 
came  in  that  blundering  Irishman,  ordained  of  Providence  to 
bring  the  hidden  thoughts  of  men  to  light  by  his  surpassing 
eloquence  and  his  intolerable  egotisms,  Whitefield,  "whose 
shade  through  history  halts,"  as  Whittier  well  says.  The 
issue  of  his  New  England  career  was  the  remorseless  test 
put  to  every  man  of  the  sternest  Calvinism  or  its  most 
decided  negative.  Compromise  was  at  an  end.  It  was  Cal- 
vinism, pure  and  simple,  or  a  new  departure.  Then  fol- 
lowed the  two  Tennents,  Scotch-Irish  Presbyterians,  of  New 
Jersey.  Then  came  the  fanatical  Davenport,  of  South  old, 
Long  Island.  And  so  came  about  what  is  called  by  Con- 
gregational historians  "the  Great  Awakening"  of  1740. 

From  that  time,  it  was  predestined  that  there  should  be 
two  opposite  movements,  a  Channing  movement  on  the  one 
side,  and  a  "revival  "movement  with  Nettleton  and  other 
thorough  Calvinists  on  the  other  side;  and  it  seems  to  me 
that  this  man  that  we  are  speaking  of  to-day  must,  to  his 
own  friends,  as  they  stood  nearer  and  nearer  to  him,  have 
appeared  almost  with  an  aureole  upon  his  head,  evidently 
sainted  before  he  was  taken  away.  It  is  the  simplest  thing 
in  the  world  for  us  to  stand  here  and  recognize  the  true 
pedestal  on  which  he  stood  in  the  history  of  that  movement 
which  was  born  in  1740.  He  did  not  create  it,  for  it  began 
long  before  he  was  influenced  by  it.  It  was  the  effort  of  the 
New  England  conscience  to  escape  from  the  awful  dogmas 
of  Edwards, —  to  find  its  way  back  to  what  I  conceive  to  be 
a  better  gospel.  The  real  object  was  to  save  the  gospel 
and  reject  the  iron  system  which  called  itself  by  that  holy 


I 86  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

name.  Thcrctoro,  it  was  loni^  known  as  Arminianism,  then, 
after  Channing  had  passed  through  the  paths  of  Arianism, 
as  Socinianism,  or  Unitarianism. 

As  a  boy,  Channing  must  have  had  extraordinary  keen- 
ness of  perception  and  tenderness  of  conscience.  It  was 
the  death  of  his  father,  I  think,  that  went  down  into  his  soul 
and  stirred  it  to  its  depths,  and  brought  him  to  a  conscious 
religious  life,  and  to  a  constant  thought  of  it  ever  after- 
wards; and  then,  almost  the  first  man  that  came  in  contact 
with  him,  and  made  an  impression  upon  his  religious  life, — 
as  some  old  dominie  has  first  made  his  profound  impression 
upon  us  when  we  were  boys, —  and  guided  his  mind,  and 
turned  his  thought,  was  Dr.  Samuel  Hopkins. 

Dr.  Hopkins  was  a  pupil  of  Jonathan  Edwards  ;  and  I 
tliink  I  am  correct  in  saying  that,  as  such,  he  had  accepted 
almost  entirely  Edwards'  theological  system.  He  accepted 
with  it  another  idea,  which  many  of  the  best  of  the  pagans 
have  held,  which,  if  treated  as  unskilful  men  often  do,  you 
may  make  seem  fearful ;  or  you  may  use  it  wisely,  and  may 
make  it  shine  with  the  very  brightness  of  God's  presence. 
That  idea  was,  roughly,  that  a  man  should  so  live  that  he 
shall  feel  more  or  less  willing  to  be  damned,  if  it  be  God's 
will,  for  His  glory.  It  is  an  old  Stoical  notion,  which  has 
run  through  the  human  race  from  its  beginning.  And  it 
affected  Hopkins  powerfully ;  and  I  imagine  that  it  begat 
William  Ellery  Channing.  The  first  of  the  books  that  he 
was  profoundly  interested  in  in  college  was  Hutchinson's 
"  Ideas  of  Beauty  and  Virtue,"  which  drilled  him  in  that 
same  general  idea,  that,  benevolence  could  not  have  a  self- 
ish origin.  Take  that  principle,  and  follow  it  through  his 
earlier  writings,  and  you  find  the  man  filled  with  its  natural 
results.  And,  by  the  way,  let  me  say  that  we  have  all  been 
a  little  incorrect  here  this  morning  in  supposing  or  talking 
as   if  Channing  had   been   brought   up   a   Unitarian.     The 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  iS/ 

thing,  as  it  appears  to  us  to-day  as  a  rounded  system,  is  not 
the  thing  as  it  appeared  to  men  in  1780.  It  was  then  the 
division  or  balance  between  the  two  sections  of  the  ortho- 
dox order, —  the  Congregational  system  itself. 

I  remember  that  my  dear  old  friend,  "Rabbi"  Stuart,  of 
Andover,  always  spoke  of  the  Unitarians  as  Arminians  ; 
that  is,  as  the  antagonists  of  Calvin.  So  I  say  to  you  Uni- 
tarians here  to-day  that  I  am  a  better  Unitarian  than  you 
are ;  because,  with  all  your  admiration  for  Channing,  I  do 
not  see  that  you  recognize  when  he  gave  up  his  Arianism. 
And  I  say  —  I  say  it  frankly  anywhere — that  I  worship  one 
God  with  all  my  soul ;  and  I  say,  looking  at  the  Redeemer 
of  men,  that  I  will  not  allow  any  being  or  creature,  however 
supernal,  to  stand  between  the  man  Christ  Jesus  and  the  One 
infinite  God.  He  was  God  manifest  in  the  flesh;  and  to  me 
he  is  not  merely  a  sort  of  being  superior  to  archangels. 

It  seems  to  me  perfectly  clear  that  that  was  the  system 
which  Channing  received  as  a  boy,  and  which  entered  into 
all  his  life.  He  antagonized  Calvinism,  as  it  had  appeared 
in  the  Congregational  life  of  New  England.  He  believed 
profoundly  that  benevolence  could  not  have  a  selfish  origin  ; 
and  he  was  willing  to  accept  any  opprobrium  or  persecution 
for  the  faith  that  God  is  all  good,  and  could  wish  no  evil 
thing.  I  love  to  trace  the  roots  of  his  life-thoughts  back 
into  the  age  before  him.  For,  talk  as  you  please  about  it, 
that  glorious  New  England  thought,  that  grand  old  Calvin- 
istic  life,  certainly  begat  men  and  women.  They  brought 
that  life  up  to  that  point  where  reaction  in  dogma  was  in- 
evitable, their  mistakes  bringing  them  here  to  rigid  Calvin- 
ism, and  bringing  them  there  to  freer  thought.  And  at  last 
the  Master  had  occasion  for  another  mode  of  education. 
And  God,  in  his  mysterious  providence,  gave  to  this  deli- 
cate, sickly  boy  his  wonderful  power  simply  to  love  truth  for 
asserting  itself,  simply  to  throw  himself  in  the  way  of  every- 


I  88  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

thing  tliat  was  good  and  beautiful  and  kindly  and  tender, 
and  to  utter  always  the  right  word  and  the  right  thought  to 
his  troubled  age.  As  I  read  his  writings,  I  confess  that  the 
chief  point  about  the  man  is,  to  my  thought,  that  he  was  like 
crystal.  I  always  see  through  him.  I  do  not  stop  to  think 
that  he  was  a  Yankee,  and  that  I  was  born  in  Georgia ;  or 
that  he  sympathized  with  the  abolitionists,  while  I  was 
taught  to  detest  them.  I  forget  that  he  was  a  Unitarian, 
and  that  he  had  ideas  about  war  that  I  cannot  agree  with, 
1  care  nothing  for  those  things  that  are  merely  upon  the 
surface.  I  recognize  that  there  was  in  him  —  always,  and  in 
all  that  he  did,  and  I  honor  any  man  in  whom  it  is  found  — 
this  one  thought,  "What  evil  is  in  me  I  dare  not  throne 
above."  In  that  creed  of  Channing,  on  that  platform  of  all 
true  souls,  I  shake  hands  with  you  to-day.     [Applause.] 

The  Chairman. —  We  are  glad  to  find  Dr.  Hall  so  good 
a  Unitarian,  and  we  cordially  extend  to  him  the  right  hand 
of  fellowship.  I  see  Mr.  Mayo  here,  from  Springfield.  He 
has,  as  you  are  aware,  devoted  much  time  to  the  subject  of 
education ;  and  who,  better  than  he,  can  speak  to  us  of 
Channing's  gospel  of  education  for  the  people  ?  He  will 
now  address  you. 

Mr.  Mayo,  coming  forward,  read  from  manuscript  an  able 
and  interesting  paper,  to  which  we  can  here  make  only  the 
briefest  reference.  He  claimed  that  Channing's  educational 
work  was  more  thorough,  far-seeing,  logical,  and  statesman- 
like than  any  that  had  been  attempted  in  America  before 
his  day ;  that  the  student  of  pedagogics  will  find  in  a  few 
hundred  pages  in  the  writings  of  Channing  the  most  wonder- 
ful prophecy  and  thorough  comprehension  of  all  that  is  most 
durable  and  vital  in  what  we  call  "The  New  Education." 
Dr.  Channing  was  no  believer  in  the  possibility  of  "  over- 
education."     He  always  insisted  that  the  laboring  man,  the 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  1 89 

man  of  affairs,  the  mother  in  the  home,  needed  especially 
the  expanding  and  uplifting  influence  of  education  to  open 
their  eyes  to  the  sacredness  of  common  life. 

Whoever  reads  Channing  carefully  will  see  that  never  for 
a  moment  was  he  bitten  with  the  plausible  fallacy  of  ultra 
"  secularism  "  in  popular  education.  He  saw  that  the  real 
difficulty  in  this  matter  in  America  is  with  the  clergy,  and 
very  little  with  the  people.  The  American  people,  at  the 
beginning,  made  a  new  departure  concerning  religion  in 
public  affairs,  even  more  important  to  civilization  than  the 
Protestant  Reformation  in  Europe.  That  departure  assumes 
the  existence  through  all  Christendom  of  what  Dean  Stanley 
so  happily  calls  "a  common  Christianity." 

No  man  represents  more  completely  than  Channing  the 
practically  unanimous  resolve  of  the  American  people,  that 
character  training  and  public  morality  shall  be  a  paramount 
element  in  our  common  schools,  and  that  the  basis  of  that 
training  in  private  and  public  virtue  shall  be  that  common 
Christianity  which  is  the  soul  of  all  progress  in  Christian 
lands. 
•  The  Chairman. —  We  must  hear  from  some  of  our  Uni- 
versalist  friends.  Rev,  Mr.  Nye,  pastor  of  the  "  Church  of 
Our  Father"  in  this  city,  is  with  us  here  to-day.  We  regret 
to  learn  that  he  is  about  to  leave  Brooklyn  for  another  field 
of  labor.  Before  he  goes,  however,  he  must  leave  with  us 
his  thought  about  Channing. 

REMARKS  OP  REV.  H.  R.  NYE. 

I  believe  I  would  have  preferred,  at  this  hour,  to  have 
kept  my  seat.  I  have  a  bit  of  an  address  somewhere  in  my 
pocket,  but  I  shall  utter  only  two  or  three  words  to  you  now. 

The  sympathy  existing  between  the  Universalist  and  the 
Unitarian  churches  now  is,  of  course,  much  greater  than  that 
of   former  times.     Dr.   Putnam,  the  pastor  of  this  church, 


190  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

—  and  that  accounts  probably  for  so  many  excellent  things 
in  his  character,  his  spirit,  and  life, —  was  brought  up  in  the 
Universalist  Church,  and,  if  I  am  not  incorrect,  in  a  Uni- 
vcrsalist  family.  I  was  brought  up  in  a  Congregationalist 
family,  and  my  father  was  a  Congregationalist  clergyman; 
and  I  can  remember  very  well  the  early  times  in  my  boy- 
hood days,  before  the  rupture  had  taken  place  between  the 
Trinitarian  Congregationalists  and  the  Unitarian  Congre- 
gationalists, —  the  time  to  which  the  Rector  of  the  Holy 
Trinity  Church  referred, —  when  the  Unitarians  were  Ar- 
minians,  and  when  the  name  "Unitarian"  was  scarcely 
known ;  and  you  remember  that  it  was  scarcely  known  at 
all  until  after  the  war  with  England  in  18 12.  I  can  re- 
member very  well  that  then  my  father,  though  a  Congrega- 
tional clergyman,  was  accustomed  to  exchange  with  the 
Rev.  Dr.  Crosby,  the  Unitarian  pastor,  twelve  miles  distant. 
The  rupture  was  not  quite  complete  in  that  direction. 
Now  we  are  very  near  together.  You  may  remember  Starr 
King  said — and  he  said  many  brilliant  things  concerning 
the  Universalists  and  the  Unitarians  —  that  the  Universal- 
ists  believed  that  God  was  too  good  to  damn  any  human 
being  absolutely  forever,  and  that  the  Unitarians  believed 
that  human  beings  were  too  good  to  be  damned. 

I  honor  Dr.  Channing  for  his  loyalty  to  Christ  and  his 
broad  Christian  charity.  He  believed  firmly  in  different  in- 
terpretations of  the  Christian  faith.  There  is  the  Methodist 
interpretation ;  there  is  the  Baptist  interpretation ;  there  is 
the  Congregationalist  interpretation ;  and  there  is  the  Epis- 
copalian interpretation ;  and,  if  you  please,  they  are  all 
Christian,  and  they  stand  at  last  upon  the  one  Foundation 
and  honor  the  one  Name.  Jesus  Christ  is  above  them  all, 
he  being  the  Master,  and  we  only  the  learners  and  pupils  in 
his  school.  That  is  the  reason  why  we,  in  one  sense,  so 
largely  revere  Dr.  Channing. 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  IQI 

I  have  a  wife,  at  home,  who  was  in  Dr.  Channing's 
Sunday-school.  I  hold  in  my  hand  a  sermon  preached  by 
Dr.  Channing  in  the  year  1819,  the  year  that  I  was  born. 
I  remember  that  Dr.  Channing  died  in  1842,  the  year  that 
I  was  ordained.  Somehow,  I  put  these  thoughts  along  in 
this  manner  together.  In  the  year  1842,  it  was  my  utmost 
desire  to  hear  this  great  man  preach;  but  I  could  not,  and  it 
was  never  my  privilege  to  put  my  eyes  upon  his  face.  But 
for  two  things  the  name  of  Channing  is  to  me  exceedingly 
precious :  first,  for  his  love  of  truth,  wherever  to  be  found  ; 
and  next  for  his  love  of  man.  And  I  ask  you  to  remember 
to-day  that  in  no  ancient  religion  of  which  any  man  can 
speak,  and  in  no  ancient  philosophy,  was  there  ever  such  an 
idea  of  man  as  Christianity  presents  to  us;  and  that,  in 
Christianity,  in  its  grand  idea  of  every  man  a  child  of  God 
and  every  man  a  spiritual  and  birthright  heir  of  the  im- 
mortal life,  lies  all  that  is  sweetest  and  tenderest  and  noblest 
in  the  teaching  of  Channing.  I  honor  him  for  his  love  of 
truth  and  for  his  love  of  man ;  and  I  am  very  glad  to  utter 
these  few  words,  which  I  do  with  the  profoundest  reverence, 
in  my  whole  heart,  for  the  beautiful  spirit  of  his  life,  for  the 
power  which  his  example  has  exerted  upon  the  age  since  he 
passed  away,  and  for  the  good  which  his  books  have  done 
to  my  own  soul  in  the  Christian  life.     [Applause.] 

Dr.  Gottheil  of  the  Temple  Emmanuel,  New  York,  being 
seen  in  the  audience,  Rev.  Mr.  Camp  was  requested  to  in- 
vite him  to  come  forward  and  offer  his  testimony.  As  he 
stepped  upon  the  platform,  he  was  greeted  with  hearty 
applause. 

EEMAEK3  OF  EEV.  DE,  GUSTAV  GOTTHEIL. 

Is  there  room  in  this  place, —  I  ask  not  for  much,  as  I  do 
not  intend  to  detain  you  for  any  length  of  time, —  is  there 


192  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

room  ill  this  place  for  the  hand  of  a  Jew  to  lay  a  flower 
on  the  honored  grave  of  this  apostle  of  love  and  freedom  ? 
[Applause.]  Is  there  room  for  one  of  the  ancient  people  to 
express  his  admiration  for,  and  his  great  obligation  to,  the 
man  whose  birthday  you  celebrate?  In  accepting  the  invita- 
tion that  was  kindly  extended  to  me  to  join  in  this  celebra- 
tion, I  hoped  to  be  among  the  silent  participants  ;  but,  just  as 
Mr.  Chadwick  confessed  himself  to  lie  helplessly  under  the 
spell  of  the  honored  pastor  of  this  church,  so  I  avow  myself 
to  be  in  the  power  of  one  of  his  brethren,  Mr.  Camp.  We 
Jews  have  recently  been  celebrating  the  anniversary  of  our 
fathers'  emancipation  from  Egyptian  bondage.  I  did  not 
feel  at  that  time  that  there  was  any  one  chain  about  me 
which  I  should  never  be  able  to  break ;  but  Brother  Camp 
undeceived  me  when,  a  few  moments  ago,  he  came  to  me 
with  the  command  that  I  had  to  say  something.  I  begged 
for  mercy,  but  he  was  implacable.  He  would  give  me  no 
release.  So  you  must  forbear  with  me,  and  pardon  the 
crude  state  of  my  remarks,  as  I  had  not  even  the  priv- 
ilege of  Brother  Chadwick  in  regard  to  time  for  prepara- 
tion. I  take,  however,  courage  from  the  consideration  that, 
where  the  heart  is  full,  the  least  preparation  often  proves  the 
best. 

As  many  of  those  who  hav^e  preceded  me  referred  to  some 
personal  recollections,  permit  me  to  do  so  in  my  turn. 

Some  twenty  years  ago,  I  made  my  entry  into  an  English- 
speaking  community,  at  Manchester,  England,  profoundly 
ignorant  of  the  mysteries  of  the  English  tongue.  The  presi- 
dent of  my  congregation  came  to  me  one  morning,  when  I 
was  just  setting  out  on  the  dangerous  journey  to  discover 
the  island  where  the  treasures  of  English  thought  and  feel- 
ing are  to  be  found,  and,  handing  me  two  volumes,  said : 
"  Here,  this  is  an  American  classic.  Study  him."  I  opened 
the  books.     They  were  the  works  of  William  Ellery  Chan- 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  I93 

ning.  So  you  see  that  my  acquaintance  with  your  apostle 
is  contemporaneous  with  one  of  the  most  important  changes 
in  my  life. 

Since  that  time,  I  have  never  ceased  to  read  these  works 
over ;  and  it  would  be  hard  for  me  to  convey  to  you,  even  if 
I  had  had  time  to  prepare,  the  feelings  with  which  I,  a  de- 
scendant of  that  ancient  race  which  has  fought  so  long  and 
paid  so  dearly  for  the  great  truth  of  the  unity  of  God  and 
the  brotherhood  of  man,  listened  to  the  solemn  accents  that 
fell  from  the  lips  of  this  immortal  man ;  when  I  heard  him 
solemnize  and  glorify  this  central  and  vital  doctrine  in 
accents  which  I  had  never  heard  before,  and,  to  be  frank 
with  you,  which  I  never  have  heard  again,  from  any  one 
professing  Christianity. 

I  came  still  nearer  him  through  the  medium  of  one  in 
whose  friendship  I  rejoice,  and  who  has  always  appeared 
to  me  to  stand  to  him  in  the  relation  in  which  John  the 
Evangelist  is  said  to  have  stood  to  his  Master.  I  refer  to 
Dr.  Bellows.  He  gave  me  a  new  and  deeper  interest  in  the 
works  of  the  great  divine ;  and  I  think  I  shall  not  dishonor 
his  memory  if  I  take  his  name,  next  Sabbath  day,  to  my  own 
pulpit,  and  pay  him  the  tribute  which  is  due  to  one  who 
stood  forth  the  devoted  and  eloquent  champion  of  liberty 
and  the  emancipation  of  the  slave,  the  apostle  of  human 
dignity  and  of  the  immortal  greatness  of  the  human  soul. 

The  impression  I  have  gathered  from  Dr.  Channing's 
writings  is  that  his  t*heory  of  Christianity  cannot  be  sub- 
stantiated by  the  literary  or  historical  proofs  on  which  he 
relied  ;  but  it  participated  of  his  own  deeply  moral  nature, 
his  own  great  mind,  his  deep  and  loving  heart ;  he  roams, 
as  it  were,  in  the  ancient  halls,  calling  to  his  aid  all  the 
spirits  which  he  thought  would  minister  to  the  ideal  which 
alone  could  satisfy  his  own  spiritual  needs  and  those  of  his 
generation.     It  is  Channing  reflected  on  the  historical  back- 


194  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

i;roun(l  which  he  construed,  I  look  upon  the  issue  which 
he  placed  before  himself  as  Channing's  ideal,  glorious  with 
light  and  freedom  and  joy,  as  against  the  dark  picture  of 
the  Church.  Though  he  always  meant  to  speak  as  a  dis- 
ciple, he,  in  truth,  spoke  as  a  master.  You  feel,  wlien  you 
read  him,  that  he  was  much  bolder  than  he  knew,  and  that 
all  his  thoughts  have  the  force  and  freshness  of  a  sponta- 
neous mind,  and  do  not  state  what  he  found  in  the  book, 
but  what  he  discovered  in  his  own  reason  and  conscience. 

Since  that  time,  the  issue  has  been  transferred  to  a  very 
different- field.'  The  contest  now  lies  between  science  and 
religion, —  between  religion  and  no  religion  at  all.  But, 
when  we  trace  the  way  of  progress,  Dr.  Channing  will  at 
all  times  be  recognized  as  one  marking  a  new  epoch  in  the 
development  of  Christianity  in  this  country  as  well  as  in 
others.  What  the  issue  may  be  no  man  can  tell ;  but  I 
believe  that  the  great  minds  of  all  ages  will  ever  be  held 
in  honor  as  helpers  and  coworkers  in  the  advancement  of 
the  human  mind.  I  may  declare  unto  you,  speaking  as  to 
brethren  and  sisters,  gainsaying  no  man's  faith  nor  insisting 
upon  my  own,  that  I  am  satisfied  to  feel  the  throb  of  human 
hearts,  as  I  do  now  in  this  temple,  in  the  communion  of  all 
the  saints,  whatever  the  church  that  owns  them. 

I  do  not  ascribe  perfection  or  expect  the  solution  of  the 
last  problem  to  any  one  church  or  denomination.  Truth 
would  be  but  a  very  small  thing,  hardly  worth  striving  for, 
if  it  could  be  contained  within  the  wails  of  one  church,  or 
if  it  could  be  known  among  men  ranging  themselves  under 
one  name  only.  The  human  mind  is  too  rich,  too  abundant 
in  possibilities,  for  that ;  and  when  we  leave  our  narrow 
bounds,  and  allow  our  minds  to  cross  the  ocean,  and  go  into 
distant  continents,  or  recall  half-forgotten  ages,  everywhere 
we  find  the  same  straining  of  the  human  mind  after  the  in- 
finite God,  though  in  divers  ways  and  various  manner.    And, 


i 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  I95 

as  Goethe  says,  because  men  arc  striving  after  the  highest, 
they  needs  must  err.  No  one  has  yet  appeared  on  this 
planet  in  whom  all  conditions  of  men  could  absolutely 
believe. 

Therefore,  I  join  with  my  whole  heart  every  movement 
that  tends  to  widen  our  sphere,  to  unshackle  the  soul,  and 
to  lift  it  to  the  heights  where  the  eternal  One,  that  Being 
in  whom  this  great  man  lived  and  moved,  overshadows  all 
others.     [Applause.] 

The  Chairman.  —  The  time  is  drawing  near  when  this 
meeting  must  be  brought  to  a  close.  There  are  many  others 
here  whose  voices  we  would  fain  listen  to,  and  we  regret 
that  the  needed  time  is  not  afforded  us ;  yet,  before  we  sing 
the  concluding  hymn,  we  want  to  hear  a  word  from  Boston. 
The  pastor  of  the  First  Church  of  that  city  will  be  one  of 
the  speakers  to-night  at  the  Academy ;  but  I  think  that  Mr. 
Foote,  minister  of  King's  Chapel,  the  first  of  American 
Unitarian  churches,  will  consent  to  address  you  now. 

EEMAEKS  OF  KEV.  H.  W.  FOOTE. 

My  friends,  I  did  not  expect,  at  this  late  hour,  to  say  a 
word  to  you ;  and  I  must  say  but  a  very  few  words. 

The  beauty  of  this  occasion  has  been  the  voice  from  every 
other  side  of  Christendom  and  from  beyond  it.  I  suppose 
that  our  friend.  Dr.  Putnam,  has  called  upon  me  now,  that 
the  chord  which  Channing  touched  ii-^  the  city  where  his 
work  was  done  might  not  be  wholly  wanting  here ;  and 
certainly  I  am  more  than  thankful,  not  to  lay  a  stone  on 
the  cairn  of  a  dead  prophet,  —  for,  if  he  were  only  that,  he 
would  be,  like  many  another,  almost  or  quite  forgotten,  — 
but  to  join  with  you  in  our  triumphant  testimony  to  a  life 
and  a  work  full  of  vital  and  vitalizing  power. 


196  CIIANNING    CENTENARY, 

The  sini;le  thought  that  I  would  like  to  put  into  words,  in 
thinking  of  I^r.  Channing,  is  one  that  has  not  been  brought 
out  this  morning.  Perhaps,  from  being  the  minister  of  a 
very  ancient  church,  I  like  to  trace  historic  continuity;  and 
so,  as  I  look  at  Channing's  life,  it  seems  to  me  that  some- 
times it  has  been  looked  at  too  much  as  an  isolated  fact  in 
the  spiritual  history  of  America,  and  that  his  spiritual  pedi- 
gree has  not  been  sufficiently  recognized.  Dr.  Hall  has 
told  us,  most  eloquently  and  vividly  and  truly,  how  that  is 
to  be  traced  through  the  historic  line  of  New  England  Con- 
gregationalism; but  there  was  another  factor  which,  I  think, 
as  I  ponder  Dr,  Channing's  life,  entered  more  than  that  into 
that  life,  and  that  was  the  very  blood  that  beat  in  his  veins, 

Channing  was  a  native  of  the  island  where,  from  the 
beginning,  was  the  colony  of  religious  liberty ;  and  the  ideas 
that  throbbed  in  Roger  Williams'  heart,  in  him,  blossomed 
and  bore  fairer  fruit  than  Roger  Williams  knew  or  could 
foresee.  His  life  as  a  preacher  was  passed  in  Boston,  and 
he  did  more  than  Boston  can  tell  to  fill  it  with  larger  life ; 
yet  the  most  loyal  of  us  Bostonians  can  see  that  it  was  not 
the  spirit  most  characteristic  of  Boston  that  kindled  in  him, 
though  he  strove  to  make  this  spirit  more.  He  brought  to 
us  ideal  elements  of  character  which  he  did  not  fully  find 
there,  and  he  made  that  the  place  whence  his  spiritual  phi- 
losophy and  the  large  light  of  his  generous  soul  shone  as 
from  a  beacon  set  on  a  hill.  His  spirit  was  the  spirit  of 
Rhode  Island.  He  was  a  typical  Rhode  Islander.  That 
which  we  have  to  remember  and  to  rejoice  at  in  him  more 
than  any  thing  that  he  taught,  more  than  any  one  of  the' 
ideas,  great,  living,  eternal,  which  were  the  very  heart  of  his 
life,  is  the  fact  of  what  he  was  in  himself.  His  special 
influence  is  and  must  be,  chiefly,  in  the  fact  that  he  stands 
pre-eminently  in  our  modern  America  for  moral  ideas.  Here 
was  one  who  lived  in  these  thoughts,  whose  life  was  spent 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  I97 

in  communing  with  them  and  in  setting  them  before  others, 
the  thoughts  the  greatest,  the  ideas  the  most  inspiring, 
which  a  soul  can  touch.  Who  can  estimate  the  infinite  value 
to  his  country  of  a  man  who  is  consecrated  absolutely  to 
such  high,  grave  themes  in  this  land  of  hasty  speech;  in 
this  age  of  theological  indifference,  on  the  one  side,  or  of 
theological  virulence,  even  ncJw,  on  the  other ;  in  this  period 
so  devoured  with  the  lust  for  material  things;  in  this  era 
of  an  unspiritual  philosophy,  when,  though  the  stars  shine, 
there  are  so  many  eyes  that  cannot  see  their  shining.? 
How  shall  we  describe  in  words  glowing  enough  the  value 
of  such  a  type  of  character,  this  mind,  so  calm,  and  so  pa- 
tient in  waiting  for  the  truth  to  orb  itself  in  its  full  light, 
this  soul  that  lived  so  absolutely  in  communion  with  the 
great  Eternal  Thought,  —  the  thought  of  Christ,  of  duty,  of 
the  human  soul,  and  of  the  living  God.-'     [Applause.] 

At  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  Foote's  remarks,  the  audience 
rose,  and  joined  in  singing  the  following  doxology  (Hymn 
104  of  the  Collection) :  — 

From  all  that  dwell  below  the  skies, 
Let  the  Creator's  praise  arise. 

The  Chairman  then  renewed  the  invitation  to  all  present 
to  repair  to  the  adjoining  chapel  and  basement  hall  of  the 
church,  where  committees  of  ladies  were  in  waiting  to  re- 
ceive them  to  the  social  festivities  of  the  day. 

The  benediction  was  pronounced  by  Rev.  Dr.  Peabody,  of 
Cambridge. 

At  the  close  of  the  morning  meeting,  some  six  hundred 
persons  accepted  the  invitation  to  the  social  festival,  and 
soon  assembled  in  the  chapel  of  the  church. 

The  desk  in  the  chapel  had  been  removed  from  its  plat- 
form, which  was  now  thickly  set  with  a  variety  of  flowering 


\()S  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

phinls.  Tables  bountifully  spread  with  refreshments  ex- 
tended alon<^  the  centre  of  the  room.  A  blessing  was  asked 
by  Rev.  George  W.  Cutter,  of  Buffalo,  N.  Y,  ;  and,  long 
after  the  repast  which  followed,  friends  from  near  and  from 
afar  still  lingered  to  talk  of  the  one  subject  of  the  day,  and 
to  revive  memories  and  traditions  of  past  years. 


MEETING  IN  THE  ACADEMY  OF  MTJSIO. 

The  final  meeting  of  the  celebration  was  held  in  the 
Academy  of  Music  on  Wednesday  evening,  April  7,  at  7.45 
o'clock.  Free  tickets  had  been  issued  for  all  who  wished 
to  attend,  and  were  placed- at  numerous  convenient  centres 
in  Brooklyn,  N.Y.,  or  sent  with  circulars  of  invitation  to 
friends  in  and  out  of  the  city.  The  Brooklyn  Eagle  of  the 
next  day,  in  its  report  of  the  occasion,  said  :  — 

"  The  Academy  of  Music  has  rarely,  if  ever,  held  such  a 
magnificent  audience  as  that  which  assembled  within  its  walls 
last  evening  to  celebrate  the  one  hundredth  anniversary 
of  the  birth  of  William  Ellery  Channing.  A  large  throng 
waited  before  the  doors  were  opened  to  pay  homage  to  the 
memory  of  the  great  preacher  and  thinker,  and  eagerly  em- 
braced the  first  opportunity  of  entering  the  building.  When 
the  portals  were  unbarred,  the  multitude,  like  a  mighty 
torrent  released  from  its  bonds,  rushed  through  the  door- 
ways and  surged  over  the  parquet  and  along  the  galleries, 
submerging  every  seat  in  the  dense  human  tide.  It  was  a 
grand  audience  that  looked  up  from  the  main  floor  and  down 
from  the  bended  bows  of  the  dress  and  family  circles.  It 
embraced  a  vast  representation  of  thinking  Brooklyn,  beside 
delegates  from  other  cities  who  came  to  honor  Channing  and 
to  enjoy  the  intellectual  treat  promised  in  the  announcement. 
All  the  faces  in  the  throng  were  reflective  of  careful  atten- 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  1 99 

tion  and  profound  thought.  Fully  one-half  of  the  audience 
was  composed  of  ladies. 

The  decorations  were  almost  entirely  floral.  The  orches- 
tra stall  was  turned  into  a  flower-garden.  Huge  calla  lilies, 
with  snow-like  bells  and  darting  golden  tongues,  raised  their 
pure  petals  from  masses  of  evergreens  that  screened  the 
facing  of  the  stage.  Azaleas,  ferns,  and  potted  plants  and 
flowers  of  numerous  varieties  filled  the  entire  space  between 
the  boxes.  Beneath  the  proscenium  arch,  in  letters  of  white 
upon  a  ground  of  emerald  green,  was  this  reminder,  "  1780 
—  Channing — 1880,"  which  had  been  seen  over  the  pulpit 
in  the  church  during  the  morning  and  afternoon. 

Beside  the  reading-desk  bloomed  an  immense  floral  cross 
and  star.  Its  flowers  were  radiant  and  fragrant,  and  showed 
all  their  beauties  beneath  the  gleaming  gas-jets.  An  excel- 
lent portrait  in  oil  of  Channing  stood  at  the  head  of  the 
centre  aisle.  The  painting  was  by  Ingham,  of  New  York,  and 
is  the  property  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Bellows.  It  was  adorned 
by  an  elaborate  floral  wreath.  The  perfume  of  the  flowers 
made  fragrant  the  atmosphere  in  the  auditorium.  When 
the  exercises  began,  every  inch  of  space  in  the  Academy 
was  packed.     At  least  four  thousand  persons  were  present." 

Beside  those  who  addressed  the  meeting,  there  were 
seated  on  or  near  the  stage  five  or  six  hundred  persons, 
representing  the  most  prominent  departments  of  social, 
official,  literary,  and  professional  life,  as  well  as  all  sects  and 
parties  in  the  city.  Mingled  with  these  were  many  distin- 
guished ministers  and  laymen  from  other  places.  Included 
in  this  general  array  of  citizens  and  strangers  were  Mr. 
Isaac  H.  Frothingham,  President  of  the  Board  of  Trustees 
of  the  Church  of  the  Saviour  ;  Rev.  A.  P.  Peabody,  D.D.  ; 
Rev.  Charles  H.  Hall,  D.D. ;  Rev.  John  Cotton  Smith,  D.D., 
of  the  Church  of  the  Ascension,  New  York;  ex-Mayor  John 
W.    Hunter;   Hon.  Dorman   B.    Eaton,    New  York;    Hon, 


20O  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Joseph  Ncilson,  Justice  of  the  City  Court ;  Joshua  M.  Van 
Cott,  Esq.;  Hon.  J.  S.  T.  Stranahan  ;  Mr.  Alexander  M. 
White;  Rev.  Henry  W.  Foote,  of  King's  Chapel,  Boston; 
Mr.  Josiah  O.  Low  ;  ex-Judge  John  Greenwood  ;  Hon.  A.  W. 
Tenney  ;  Hon.  Ripley  Ropes;  Capt.  Nathaniel  Putnam; 
Prof.  R.  F.  Leighton  ;  Professors  A.  Crittenden  and  D.  G. 
Eaton,  of  the  Packer  Institute ;  Rev.  J.  G.  Bass,  City 
Missionary;  Mr.  R.  H.  Manning;  Rev.  J.  C.  Ager,  Pastor 
of  the  Swedenborgian  Church  ;  Rev.  Almon  Gunnison  and 
Rev.  H.  R.  Nye,  of  the  Brooklyn  Universalist  churches ; 
Mr.  John  T.  Howard  ;  Hon.  Demas  Strong;  Col.  Rodney  C. 
Ward ;  Rev.  William  C.  Leonard,  of  the  Church  of  the 
Redeemer ;  Mr.  J.  G.  Hollinshead ;  Mr.  E.  W.  Crowell ; 
Mr.  Gordon  L.  Ford;  Chauncy  L.  Mitchell,  M.D. ;  Mr. 
Henry  Sanger ;  Rev.  J.  W.  Chadwick ;  Mr.  Eli  Robbins ; 
Mr.  Oliver  Johnson ;  Hon.  Edwin  Reed,  Bath,  Me. ;  Messrs. 
James  and  Duncan  Littlejohn  ;  Rev.  Edward  Beecher,  D.D.; 
Collector  John  Tanner;  Rev.  S.  H.  Camp;  Mr.  Reuben  W. 
Ropes ;  Col.  W.  B.  C.  Thornton ;  Rev.  A.  D.  Mayo,  Spring- 
field, Mass.;  Dr.  Gustav  Gottheil,  of  Temple  Immanuel, 
New  York  ;  ex-Mayor  Samuel  Booth ;  Mr.  George  Hannah, 
Librarian  of  the  Long  Island  Historical  Society ;  Mr.  S.  B, 
Noyes,  Librarian  of  the  Brooklyn  Library ;  Prof.  G.  S. 
Taylor,  of  the  Adelphi  Academy ;  President  David  Coch- 
ran, of   the    Polytechnic    Institute;   Mr.    Samuel   McLean. 

Mr.  A.  A.  Low,  President  of  the  meeting,  and  the  va- 
rious speakers  for  the  evening,  were  greeted  with  loud 
applause  as  they  came  upon  the  stage  at  the  appointed 
hour. 

Mr.  Low,  the  President,  excused  himself  from  making 
any  opening  address,  but  called  on  Rev.  Dr.  Putnam,  Chair- 
man of  Committee  of  Arrangements,  to  offer  any  intro- 
ductory remarks  that  might  be  necessary.     Dr.  Putnam  said 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN,  201 

that  his  speech  would  simply  be  the  announcement  of  the 
first  hymn  on  the  printed  programme.  He  would,  however, 
state  that  all  sects  and  churches  in  the  vicinity,  and  the 
public  generally,  had  been  cordially  invited  to  join  in  the 
commemorative  meetings  of  the  day ;  and  he  desired,  in 
behalf  of  the  Committee  of  Arrangements,  to  thank  most 
heartily  the  thousands  present  that  they  had  accepted  the 
invitation  in  the  same  spirit  in  which  it  had  been  given. 
He  then  requested  the  assembly  to  rise,  and  all  join  in  sing- 
ing the  hymn  to  the  tune,  "Hummel." 

The  audience  responded  to  the  call,  and  were  led  by  a 
chorus  of  more  than  fifty  voices  from  the  several  Unitarian 
churches  of  the  city,  with  organ  and  cornet  accompaniment. 

After  prayer  by  the  Rev.  George  C.  Miln,  pastor  of  the 
Bast  Congregational  Church,  Brooklyn,  the  Chairman  intro- 
duced the  Rev.  Dr.  Rufus  Ellis,  of  the  First  Church,  Boston. 

EEMAKKS  OF  EEV.  EUFU3  ELLIS,  D.D. 

Mr.  President  and  dear  Friends,  —  I  count  it  a  great  privi- 
lege to  be  summoned  to  this  gospel  feast.  It  is  always 
pleasant,  it  is  always  helpful,  to  look  up  and  recall  a  deserv- 
edly famous  man.  I  love  to  be  able  to  look  up,  and  not  to 
be  called  upon,  as  we  so  continually  are  in  our  day,  to  ana- 
lyze, to  explain,  to  account  for  great  men  ;  for  that  is  so  apt, 
as  you  know,  to  end  in  explaining  them  away,  and  bringing 
them  down  to  our  poor  level.  We  want  to  look  up,  and  let 
the  light  from  their  faces  shine  down  into  ours  ;  and  I  am 
sure  it  is  an  especial  privilege  when  we  can  come  together, 
men  and  women  of  different  minds,  of  different  opinions,  — 
and  yet,  as  we  believe,  of  the  same  most  precious  faith,  striv- 
ing to  keep  the  unity  of  the  spirit  in  the  bond  of  peace,  and 
to  be  of  one  heart  in  one  Christian  household,  if  we  cannot 
be  just  of  one  mind  and  of  one  opinion.     It  is  one  of  our 


202  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

privileges,  us  we  all  sec  in  these  days,  that  we  can  so  come 
together,  and  that,  when  we  make  up  our  calendar  of  saints, 
we  always  go  beyond  our  communion,  seeking  only  for  those 
whose  love  for  Christ  is  true.  And  because  there  are  so 
many  such  seekers,  the  name  that  we  are  naming  to-day  will 
be  spoken  with  affection  and  reverence  in  many  Christian 
households, —  not  only  Protestant,  but  Catholic  as  well;  for 
we  know^  that  one  of  the  best  eulogiums  upon  Channing  has 
been  pronounced  by  one  of  our  Roman  Catholic  brethren. 

Now,  sir,  it  does  not  seem  to  me  hard  to  find  or  long  to 
seek,  if  we  wish  to  know  what  it  is  about  Channing  that  so 
binds  us  all  to  him.  Why,  the  very  things  that  have  been 
said  about  his  limitations,  the  very  things  that  have  been 
said  sometimes  seemingly  in  disparagement  of  him,  only 
help  to  bring  out  his  characteristic  merits  more  distinctl)t 
They  only  help  to  put  a  frame  around  the  picture.  I  think 
we  shall  all  say  that  he  is  always,  and  everywhere,  and  at 
all  times,  and  in  all  his  utterances,  distinctively  a  gospel 
preacher, —  one  of  the  great  gospel  preachers  of  our  age. 
People  object.  They  say,  "Well,  he  was  not  a  great  the- 
ologian "  ;  and  they  are  right.  His  theology  was  always 
only  popular  theology.  It  was  not  metaphysical  theology. 
It  was  not  the  theology  of  the  schools  and  of  the  professors. 
They  add,  "lie  was  not  distinctiv^ely  a  man  of  letters"; 
and  I  should  say,  though  not  quite  so  confidently,  that  I  think 
they  are  right  there.  I  suppose  that  even  his  great  sermons 
will  hardly  go  down  to  posterity  among  the  great  English 
classics.  We  do  not  read  them  now  at  a  sitting.  We  do 
not  take  in  every  picture  eagerly.  We  do  not  read  to  the 
very  last  line,  just  as  we  sip  the  last  drop  of  some  precious 
cordial.  They  are  didactic.  They  are  over-diffuse  even,  I 
think,  for  the  reader.  They  are  weighty  rather  than  inci- 
sive. Even  his  essays  are  all  sermons.  He  always  preaches. 
And  they  say  that  he  founded  no  sect.     He  was  only  inci- 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  203 

dentally,  indirectly,  by  the  way,  connected  with  a  sect.  They 
even  tell  you  that  he  knew  very  little  of  the  world,  —  the 
great  world,  the  world  of  the  statesman,  the  world  of  the 
merchant ;  that  he  was  a  parish  minister,  and  an  invalid  at 
that.  And  that  is  true,  also.  But,  then,  consider,  my  friends, 
that,  though  metaphysical  theology  has  spoiled  a  great  many 
preachers,  it  never  made  one  yet,  and  it  is  not  an  essential 
part  of  a  minister's  outfit ;  and  consider,  too,  —  and  we  Uni- 
tarians have  had  some  sad  experience  in  this,  — that  a  man 
of  letters  is  often  wholly  lost  upon  a  great  congregation  of 
hungry  souls,  whilst  the  man  who  is  thought  to  be  unlet- 
tered, and  never  to  have  been  taught  anything,  will  hold  an 
audience  sometimes,  out  on  the  parish  green,  that  has  been 
lost  from  the  church. 

And,  then,  as  to  founding  a  sect,  was  there  ever  a  great 
preacher  yet  who  was  not  a  great  deal  larger  than  his  sect, 
or  who  did  not  come  to  be,  at  all  events,  before  he  got 
through }  Consider,  too,  as  to  knowing  men.  Why,  how 
many  of  us  know  a  great  many  men,  know  all  about  what 
they  are  saying  and  doing,  and  yet  know  very  little  about 
man  and  what  is  in  man. 

Now,  we  can  admit  all  these  things  about  Channing,  only 
remembering  that,  when  the  moral  development  in  a  man  is 
very  large,  it  is  likely  to  overshadow  the  intellect,  and  we  do 
not  think  as  much  of  his  intellectuality  then  as  we  ought. 
Remember  this.  And  yet,  admitting  it  all,  I  shall  say  that 
Channing  was  so  wondrously  endowed  with  the  prophetic 
function  that  it  amounted,  as  it  always  does,  to  genius,  to 
which  you  must  add  learning,  as  much  as  you  can  get  of  it, 
and  intellect,  as  much  as  you  can  get  of  it,  and  poetry,  and 
wit,  and  rhetoric,  and  everything  else.  But,  then,  all  those 
things  are  perfectly  useless,  and  always  very  tedious  in  tlie 
preacher,  without  the  prophetic  function.  Channing  was, 
first,  last,  always,  a  great  gospel  preacher  ;  and,  if  you  are 


204  CHANNING   CENTENARY. 

willing  lo  use  the  old  words  in  the  old  sense,  you  had 
better  say  that  he  was  a  prophet.  Being  filled  with  the 
spirit  of  his  God,  and  finding  God  near  him  and  in  him,  he 
prophesied  ;  and  the  world  listened  to  him.  And  that  is  why 
we  are  here  to-night.  And  we  do  not  consider,  I  think,  as 
much  as  we  ought,  how  preaching  has  been  spoiled  by  those 
very  things  which  Channing  was  said  to  lack,  or  how  much 
we  have  lost  and  left  out  of  sight  that  old  prophetic  speech, 
—  tiio  word  which  the  people  in  Judea  and  in  Galilee  heard 
so  gladly,  not  irrational  truth,  not  unreasonable  truth,  but 
unreasoned  truth,  truth  from  the  people  to  the  people,  truth 
right  out  of  the  abundance  of  a  loving,  religious  heart.  The 
Word  of  God,  that  never  returns  to  a  man  void, —  we  are 
spoiling  that  continually  by  what  we  undertake  to  add  to 
it.  And  Channing  is  to  be  remembered,  not  so  much  for 
what  else  he  was,  —  and  that  was  a  great  deal,  —  but  be- 
cause he  was  all  else  in  subordination  to  this  great  function 
of  a  preacher ;  and  for  that,  I  say,  we  remember  him.  In 
that  way,  he  served  his  generation ;  and  he  is  laying  his 
hand  upon  our  hearts  to-day,  still  living  and  working  on. 

He  came,  as  such  men  always  do  come,  in  the  fulness  of 
the  times, —  not  alone,  not  unheralded.  He  came  at  a  time 
when  he  was  greatly  needed,  and  there  was  preparation  for 
him.  As  those  of  you  who  heard  the  sermon  of  last  evening 
know,  it  was  a  time  in  New  England  when  just  such  a  man 
was  wanted.  We  had  had  a  dispensation  of  the  letter, 
which  indeed  was  glorious ;  but  there  was  needed,  as  we 
always  need,  a  fresh  dispensation  of  the  Spirit,  which  should 
be  infinitely  more  glorious.  And  it  came,  and  there  had  been 
preparation  for  it.  There  were  tokens  of  such  life  in  New 
England  before  the  Revolution.  Charles  Chauncy,  in  the  old 
First  Church  of  Boston,  was  a  man  of  mark, —  a  man  who 
made,  or  began  to  make,  an  epoch  in  his  time.  So  was  May- 
hew,  in  the  West  Church.    And,  before  the  Revolution,  they 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  205 

both  of  them  spoke  living  words, —  not  merely  words  from 
the  old  traditions, —  and  the  times  went  on  ripening.  There 
were  signs  in  the  New  England  Congregational  body  of 
a  reviving  of  religious  life ;  and  it  is  very  narrow,  it  is  a 
great  mistake,  to  say  that  it  came  from  only  one  quarter. 
It  came  from  both  sides  of  that  body, —  from  those  who  were 
called  "conservatives,"  and  from  those  who  would  have  been 
called,  if  the  word  had  been  used  in  that  day,  "liberals." 
There  was  a  feeling  all  around  that  men  must  come  nearer 
to  flie  reality  of  Christ's  gospel ;  that  they  must  have  some- 
thing other  than  what  they  had  been  having  too  much  of  in 
New  England,  and  a  great  deal  of  in  Scotland, —  what  was 
called  "Moderatism."  There  were  many  preachers  who  had 
ceased  to  hold  old  truths  in  the  old  way ;  and  they  met  the 
case  by  saying  nothing  about  them,  lest  somebody  should  be 
hurt,  lest  the  repose  of  the  churches  —  for  it  was  no  better 
than  that  —  should  be  disturbed,  lest  there  should  be  some 
divisions. 

Now,  they  all  began  to  feel  that  that  was  not  the  way  to 
preach  the  gospel.  And  so  the  more  conservative  said, 
"  If  we  are  going  to  have  these  old  doctrines,  let  us  have 
them,  and  let  us  have  them  clearly  and  earnestly  stated." 
On  the  other  hand,  there  was  a  feeling  that  the  time  had 
gone  by  for  these  old  statements,  and  that  they  must  be 
restated.  On  both  sides,  they  were  reaching  out  for  the 
reality  of  the  Lord's  Word, —  the  conservatives  in  their  way, 
and  the  liberals  in  their  way ;  and  we  must  not  dispose  of 
the  whole  matter  by  saying  that  on  the  one  side  it  was  all 
bigotry,  and  that  on  the  other  side  there  were  only  pale 
negations.  That  does  not  represent  the  case  at  all.  There 
were  signs  of  a  new  life.  Channing,  in  his  way,  was  reach- 
ing continually  after  this  great  divine  reality.  He  believed 
that  there  was  still  a  message  in  the  gospel  for  men,  and 
he  was  bound  somehow  to  get  it  uttered. 


J06  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

He  was  not  alone.  You  cannot  help  thinkinj;  sometimes, 
or  asking;-  yourself,  what  might  have  been  the  result,  if  some 
men  who  began  their  career  with  him  had  only  been  per- 
mittetl  to  live  on.  There  was  a  famous  man  in  what  was* 
called  the  Brattle  Street  Church,  one  Buckminster  (we  do 
not  hear  his  name  often  in  our  day), —  a  man  who  died  at 
the  early  age  of  twenty-eight,  and  yet  left  his  mark  deep  in 
that  city, —  evidently  a  man  of  most  earnest  spirit,  of  most 
wonderful  gifts ;  and  another  man,  one  Thatcher,  in  what 
was  called  "The  New  South  Church,"  who  lived  a  little 
longer.  Both  of  them  were  contemporaries  of  Channing; 
Buckminster  dying  in  1812,  and  Thatcher  in  1818,  Thatcher 
only  thirty-two  or  thirty-three  years  of  age  at  the  time  of  his 
death,  surviving  to  write  the  memorial  of  his  friend.  These 
inen  died  in  the  very  bloom  of  their  years.  Channing  lived 
on  in  life-long  feebleness,  and  yet  with  great  power,  reaching 
out  after  this  reality. 

We  sometimes  wish  —  I  am  sure  I  do  —  that  the  Congre- 
gational body  had  not  been  divided,  and  that  Channing 
might  have  got  at  his  affirmations  in  some  more  direct  way, 
just  as  the  blessed  Lord  reached  his  affirmations, —  not  by 
discussing  with  the  Jews  their  theology,  but  by  passing  right 
through  the  HalacJia  and  the  Hagada,  as  they  called  them, — 
the  allegories  and  the  legal  niceties  that  were  taught  then 
in  the  synagogue.  He  simply  passed  over  them  all,  paying 
hardly  any  attention  to  them,  not  destroying,  but  fulfilling, 
and  went  back  to  the  great  Book  of  Deuteronomy  and  to 
the  prophets,  Isaiah  and  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  and  Micah, 
and  the  rest,  building  upon  them.  But  such  things  are  not 
for  us  men,  and  Channing  must  do  the  best  thing  he  could ; 
and  so  he  became  a  controversialist,  though  only  for  a  little 
while.  We  wish  it  could  have  been  otherwise.  At  least,  I 
do,  because  the  theology  of  Channing  seems  to  me  to  be 
the  least  interesting  part  of  him.     He  kept  a  good  deal  that 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  20/ 

he  might  as  well  have  parted  with ;  and  what  interests  us 
about  him  is  not  this  transitional  and  temporary  thing  that 
we  call  theology,  but  his  Christian  consciousness,  his  faith 
in  Christ  as  the  One  who  lived  in  God  and  for  God,  and  for 
God's  children,  and  who  had  a  personal  message  to  his  soul. 
That  is  what  he  cared  for,  and  compared  with  that  it  was 
of  very  little  consequence  in  what  it  happened  to  be  em- 
bodied. 

It  was,  in  his  case,  embodied  first  in  Trinitarianism,  then 
in  Arianism,  and  then  we  can  hardly  tell  in  what ;  but  the 
consciousness  remained,  and  that  was  the  deep  living  nature 
in  him,  and  that  was  what  he  lived  to  bring  near  to  men's 
need;  and  every  day  he  became  less  polemical  in  his  preach- 
ing. We  talk  about  his  theological  sermons  and  his  contro- 
versial sermons  ;  but  they  are  very  few  in  number  compared 
with  the  rest  of  his  sermons.  He  personally  got  his  sub- 
jects from  the  street,  and  from  men's  wants  and  sins,  and 
strove  to  apply  them  in  the  most  practical  fashion,  not  as 
men  had  been  so  much  in  the  habit  of  preaching  all  around 
him,  seeming  to  play  with  their  subject,  because  Sunday 
had  come  and  there  must  be  a  sermon,  but  as  men  who  had 
a  point  to  carry,  and  who  believed  that  Jesus,  in  his  spirit 
and  life,  could  help  them  carry  it.  That  was  his  manner  of 
preaching;  and  every  one  said,  "Well,  now,  here  is  some 
one  who  has  something  to  say"  ;  and  they  filled  his  church, 
as  men  always  fill  the  church  of  a  preacher  w^ho  is  not 
coaxing  and  teasing  and  trying  to  persuade  them  to  go 
to  church,  but  who  gives  them  something  to  go  for.  They 
came  and  heard  him,  and  heard  him  gladly;  and  he  was 
really  an  epoch-making  man.  "  He  founded  no  sect,"  you 
say.  Well,  why  should  he  have  founded  a  sect  ?  What  did 
we  want  of  another  sect  .-•  Were  there  not  too  many  sects 
then,  as  there  are  now.?  Ought  we  not  to  be  thankful, 
when  we  begin  to  see  the  end  of  one  of  them .-'     Channing 


208  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

founded  no  sect ;  but  he  became  easily  the  leader  of  a  still 
increasing  company  of  men,  who  may  be  said  —  and  we  say 
it  reverently  —  to  be  of  the  mind  of  Jesus ;  to  see  God  as  he 
saw  him ;  to  see  men  as  he  saw  them,  with  the  same  faith; 
to  share  his  great  blessed  trusts,  his  great  blessed  confi- 
dences that  this  world  and  the  world  to  come  are  ours,  if 
we  choose  to  have  them, —  men  who  have  a  blessed  Christian 
optimism,  men  who  have  a  realistic  faith  that  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  belongs  here  on  the  earth,  and  that,  if  we  ever 
mean  to  get  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  we  must  get  into 
it  now.  [Applause.]  That  was  his  faith,  and  that  was  what 
he  preached.  I  do  not  mean  that  he  was  always  conscious 
of  this.  He  illustrates  singularly  one  of  Cromwell's  great 
sayings,  that  a  man  never  climbs  so  high  as  when  he  does 
not  know  where  he  is  going.  I  do  not  think  Channing 
knew  where  he  was  going,  but  he  was  always  enlarging, 
always  spreading  out.  He  believed  that  everything  in  this 
life  is  sacramental,  that  everything  can  be  made  the  bread 
and  the  wine  of  a  divine  life.  And  so  he  found  sacraments 
everywhere,  and  he  found  subjects  to  which  he  could  apply 
his  Christianity ;  and  he  did  apply  it  far  and  wide. 

Although  his  knowledge  of  men  was  so  largely  intuitive 
and  inspirational,  somehow  he  did  get  a  most  practical 
knowledge  of  practical  things,  and  he  became  a  leader  of 
a  great  company  of  preachers.  You  do  not  find  them, 
happily,  set  apart  in  a  little  sect,  but  you  find  them  in  all 
sects. 

Why,  when  Dean  Stanley  was  in  this  country,  a  little 
more  than  a  year  ago,  one  of  his  inquiries  was,  "Where 
is  the  Cemetery  of  Mount  Auburn  ?  "  The  gentleman  to 
whom  he  put  that  question  was  the  Rev.  Phillips  Brooks, 
He  put  it  with  a  great  deal  of  interest.  Said  Mr.  Brooks: 
"What  do  you  care  about  Mount  Auburn  ?"  For,  my  friends, 
it  is  only  one  of  our  cemeteries.     We  do  not  take  people 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  209 

out  there  so  long  as  they  are  living.  Said  Dean  Stanley, 
"Channing  is  buried  there."  He  wanted  to  go  out  and  see 
Channing's  burial-place. 

And  so  you  find  men  everywhere  preaching  Channing. 
Channing  is  preached  to-day  in  pulpits  to  which,  I  am  afraid, 
he  would  hardly  now  be  admitted,  for  reasons  which  are 
doubtless  satisfactory  to  those  who  so  appoint.  I  make  no 
criticisms  upon  them.  Every  man  must  answer  all  these 
things  to  his  own  conscience.  But  it  is  a  fact  that  he  is 
everywhere  preached,  because  his  spirit  is  abroad. 

And  so,  though  I  may  seem  to  have  spoken  lightly  of  his 
books,  it  is  not  that  I  think  little  of  them.  Their  lines  have 
gone  out,  and  are  going  out  wider  and  wider;  but  you 
cannot  put  such  a  life  as  that  into  any  book.  It  is  an 
ever-unfolding  mind.  It  is  an  ever-proceeding  spirit.  It 
comes  in  new  forms,  in  new  expressions,  every  day.  You 
think  you  have  got  the  whole  of  it,  and  you  find  that  it  is 
doing  a  greater  work  than  you  ever  thought  of,  and  that  it 
has  only  begun  its  career.  And  so  I  say  that  he  is  first,  last, 
always,  everywhere,  to  me,  the  preacher  of  this  blessed 
gospel  of  the  Son  of  God. 

In  this  simple  truth, —  unformulated,  if  you  choose  to  use 
such  a  word, —  as  it  came  from  the  lips  of  that  blessed  and 
wonderful  One,  who  lived  in  God,  and  for  God,  and  for  God's 
children,  let  us  live,  and  we  shall  say,  as  time  goes  on,  in 
the  power  and  sweetness  of  this  spirit,  "The  day  of  Pente- 
cost is  fully  come."  The  discii^les  shall  wait  no  longer  in 
Jerusalem,  amid  its  mingled  shadows  and  light.  We  mean 
to  know  what  Jesus  says ;  and  his  Word  is  in  us,  as  he 
said  it  would  be  in  them.  It  will  be  something  more  than  a 
quotation.  We  shall  know  it  ourselves,  and  shall  be  able  to 
utter  it  ;  and  then  we  shall  be  fit  to  preach  it.  We  shall 
have  it  straight  from  him.  We  mean  to  be  as  Christian 
as  his  disciples  were.     We  do  not  mean  to  interpret  Jesus 


2IO  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

by  Taul  or  by  John:  we  mean  to  interpret  Paul  and  John 
by  Jesus.  We  mean  to  get  at  the  reality.  That  was  what 
Channing  sought ;  and  that  was  what,  according  to  the  meas- 
ure of  his  age  and  time  and  ability  he  found. 

So,  while  we  take  some  little  satisfaction  as  a  denomina- 
tion in  such  a  man,  we  rather  choose  to  belong  to  the  greater 
company, —  to  be  of  all  those  who,  with  him,  are  striving  to 
walk  in  the  one  light  and  to  build  upon  the  one  foundation ; 
and  we  believe  that,  if  we  do  it  in  his  spirit,  there  will  be  as 
little  as  may  be  of  the  wood  and  the  hay  and  the  stubble 
that  will  be  consumed,  and  as  much  as  may  be  of  that  fine 
gold  which  the  fire  can  only  purify,  until  it  shall  be  laid  up 
as  treasure  at  God's  right  hand. 

I  am  very  glad  to  find  that  so  many,  this  day,  have  shown 
that  they  are  of  Channing's  spirit ;  and  I  do  not  care  how 
much  they  may  be  careful  to  say  to  me  that  they  do  not 
agree  with  him  in  this  and  that.  Well,  who  does.?  And 
who  could  find  out,  without  a  great  deal  of  trouble,  precisely 
what  he  thought  about  this  or  that  ?  And  who  would  care 
to  find  out?  It  is  the  man's  spirit,  that  ever-proceeding  life, 
in  which  we  rejoice.     [Applause.] 

The  Chairman.  —  You  have  all  heard  of  the  Rev.  Robert 
Collyer,  formerly  of  Chicago,  but  now,  I  am  happy  to  say,  of 
New  York.  He  is  accustomed  to  speak  to  full  houses,  and 
he  must  feel  at  home  here.    He  will  please  introduce  himself. 

EEMAEK8  OF  REV.  EOBEET  COLLTEK. 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Friends, —  I  do  not  know  when  I  have 
felt  more  like  sitting  still  and  enjoying  myself,  and  letting 
somebody  else  do  the  talking.  We  used  to  have  a  saying  in 
our  Methodist  class-meetings,  when  we  could  not  say  any- 
thing else  to  save  us,  "  It  is  good  to  be  here."     I  would  like 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  211 

to  say  just  that,  and  then  sit  down.  At  our  morning  meet- 
ing, I  got  so  full  that  I  had  to  go  away ;  and  now  I  feel  so 
full  that  I  am  afraid  I  shall  be  like  one  of  those  bottles  that 
are  so  full  to  the  stopper  that  the  water  cannot  get  out ! 

But  I  was  thinking  last  night  and  this  morning,  and  again 
just  now,  about  something  I  read  once  about  Channing :  that 
if  you  went  to  him,  and  began  to  praise  him  —  to  praise  the 
man — for  something  he  had  said  or  done,  his  wonderful 
eyes  seemed  to  empty  themselves  of  concern,  and  his  face 
of  the  beautiful,  eager  interest,  and  it  would  seem  to  the 
speaker  as  if  you  should  talk  to  the  snow  of  its  whiteness 
or  to  the  fresh  west  wind  of  its  power  of  refreshing.  He 
did  not  like  to  be  praised  to  his  face  ;  and  I  have  felt  very 
glad,  in  every  address  that  has  been  made,  to  notice  a  cer- 
tain delicacy  of  touch  about  it  all, —  a  feeling,  evidently,  in 
the  heart  of  the  speaker,  like  that  which  Charles  Lamb  had, 
who  said,  I  remember,  "  When  we  talk  about  those  who  have 
left  us,  to  praise  them,  we  should  be  as  modest  as  we  would 
if  they  were  still  with  us  on  the  earth."  I  have  rejoiced  in 
this  feeling,  which  has  evidently  prevailed  in  these  meetings, 
—  the  realization  that  we  must  speak  with  a  certain  delicacy, 
with  a  certain  sense  of  the  presence  of  the  man  among  us, 
and  not  overpass  the  mark  so  that  the  praise  shall  sink  into 
adulation.  I  feel  sure  that  Channing  now,  where  he  dwells, 
and  as  he  is,  cannot  have  that  feeling  about  all  this  which  he 
would  have,  if  he  were  with  us  still  in  the  flesh  ;  but,  if  he 
can  be  conscious  of  the  words  that  are  uttered  to-day  all 
over  the  world,  about  his  life,  in  praise  of  him,  he  has  risen 
so  high  and  grown  so  great  in  that  life  into  which  he  has 
gone,  that  any  such  words  as  are  said  do  not  trouble  him,  but 
he  simply  takes  them  and  gives  them  up  to  the  Giver  of  the 
gift  that  made  him  so  great  and  so  good,  and  in  some  sweet, 
spiritual  fashion  says  again  what  he  learned  to  say  as  he 
nestled  by   his    mother's  knee, —  that   beautiful  ascription, 


212  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

"  Thine  is  the  kingdom  and  the  power  and  the  glory,  forever 
and  ever,  Amen."  Wc  shall  not  hurt  him  by  such  words  as 
we  say,  especially  as  they  arc  said  out  of  such  a  heart  as 
we  witnessed  this  morning,  in  that  grand  meeting  in  the 
Church  of  the  Saviour. 

But  I  have  felt,  sir,  all  the  time,  as  if  any  word  I  might 
say  during  these  meetings  would  take,  possibly,  a  different 
turn  from  such  words  as  I  have  heard,  noble,  beautiful,  grand, 
and  sweet  as  they  have  been.  I  ha\'e  rather  longed  for 
some  man  to  say,  more  emphatically  and  more  incisively, 
what  I  recognize  in  C banning  as  his  grand,  broad  radicalism, 
—  his  deep  sympathy  with  the  wide  differences  as  well  as 
the  wide  agreements  of  men. 

I  have  been  very  much  interested  in  the  study  of  Chan- 
ning's  life  for  years  now  ;  and  I  confess  frankly,  sir,  that 
this  is  what  has  always  gone  most  warmly  to  my  heart  :  that, 
while  I  felt  that  I  could  recognize  in  Channing  that  beauti- 
ful and  noble  quality  of  the  preacher  about  which  our  brother 
has  just  spoken  so  well,  there  was  this  also  in  him,  that  he 
had  a  perpetual  sympathy  with  all  sorts  of  thinkers  on  all 
sorts  of  subjects,  and  wanted  all  the  time,  if  he  could,  to  get 
down  into  their  mind  to  explore  it,  to  see  what  good  reason 
lay  in  them  for  their  conclusion,  and  so  to  come  into  the 
closest  possible  sympathy  with  them,  while  he  must  be  the 
man  he  was  in  his  own  convictions  and  in  his  own  life. 

I  notice  .therefore  that  he,  as  a  young  man,  with  his  life 
before  him,  had  great  sympathy  for  the  writings  of  men  like 
Godwin  and  Rousseau,  and  for  the  writings  of  Mary  Woll- 
stonecraft,  who  was,  he  said,  one  of  the  greatest  women  on 
the  earth.  And  all  through  his  life  those  who  were  drawn 
to  him,  who  gathered  about  him,  who  would  come  to  him  for 
help  or  direction  or  sympathy,  were  very  much,  I  think,  like 
those  who  gathered  about  David  in  the  old  days,  in  the  cave 
of  Adullum.     Those  who  were  discontented,  and  those  who 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  21 3 

were  distressed,  and  I  guess,  also,  those  who  were  in  debt, — 
all  kinds  of  poor  creatures, —  came  to  him  to  get  some  word 
that  would  cheer  them,  and  help  them  to  go  forth  on  special 
missions  in  this  world,  and  tell  the  truth  according  to  such 
light  as  might  shine  forth  on  their  way.  I  like  that  quality 
in  Channing, —  that  grand  sympathy  for  the  differences  of 
men  in  their  thinkings  and  in  their  conclusions.  And  I 
notice  that,  as  he  grows  older,  he  loses  none  of  this.  It  is  all 
in  him  fresh  and  true  to  the  last.  Some  man  said  to  him,  I 
remember,  when  he  was  far  on  in  years  for  him,  after  he  had 
come  through  one  of  the  many  fights  into  which  he  was  per- 
petually plunged,  "You  seem  to  be  the  youngest  man  in  the 
crowd."  "Always  young  for  freedom,"  he  said.  It  was  the 
deepest  thing  in  his  heart,  that  he  should  stand  by  the  most 
absolute  freedom  of  thought  and  word  to  which  a  man  can 
attain. 

Robert  Hall  said  of  a  man,  in  his  day,  that  his  mind  was 
hung  on  hinges,  so'  that  he  was  always  in  motion,  but  made 
no  progress.  It  was  not  so  with  Channing.  He  was  always 
moving  onward  to  those  heights  of  thought  and  exploration 
that  made  him  the  grand  companion  of  all  the  prophets  of 
every  name.  He  gave  his  heart  to  the  whole  truth  ;  and 
that  was  the  reason  why  he  won  so  many  hearts.  I  remem- 
ber he  says  that  for  the  first  twelve  years  of  his  ministry  he 
does  not  remember  that  he  mentioned  any  sect  in  the  Chris- 
tian church  byname  for  criticism.  He  did  not  want  to  ques- 
tion and  bring  into  court  any  of  the  great  religious  bodies 
about  him.  He  always  wanted  to  tell  the  truth,  and  let  it 
go  home  and  rest  there,  and  do  its  work.  He  had  the  same 
feeling  towards  all  sides.  Let  him  find  an  honest  man, — 
one  he  believed  to  be  sincere  to  the  bottom  of  his  heart, — 
and  then,  so  far  as  he  could  give  that  man  companionship 
and  sympathy,  that  man  was  his  friend  and  his  companion. 
I  love  that  quality  in  the  man.     I  love  to  find  it  forever  a 


2\^  CIIANNING    CENTENARY, 

llamc  in  his  heart.  I  love  to  note  it  as  one  of  the  grandest 
and  noblest  traits  in  Channing's  character. 

Mr.  Chairman,  in  the  little  village  where  I  lived  the  better 
part  of  my  life,  three  hundred  years  ago,  there  were  two  fami- 
lies, one  living  on  the  hill  and  one  in  the  valley.  The  family 
on  the  hill  came  there  in  the  time  of  Henry  II.  They  are 
there  to-day.  They  have  not  heard  of  the  Reformation. 
They  are  just  as  nearly  as  possible  what  they  were  at  that 
time,  when  they  went  to  live  there  in  twelve  hundred  and 
something,  I  do  not  remember  what.  The  family  down  in 
the  valley  were  obscure  folk  who  worked  at  day's  work,  and 
at  the  time  of  which  I  am  speaking  the  representative  of  the 
family  was  earning  four  cents  a  day  of  our  present  money, — 
twopence,  English.  It  was  borne  in  upon  this  working  man 
that  this  would  never  do.  Something  stirred  in  his  heart 
to  strike  for  a  better  life  ;  and  so  at  last  it  came  to  pass, 
after  another  hundred  years,  they  migrated  to  this  New 
World,  leaving  the  family  still  on  the  hill.  They  were 
planted  down  in  this  soil.  They  grew,  through  the  grand 
opportunities  that  come  to  a  man  when  he  comes  from  the 
Old  World  to  the  New,  somewhere  down  in  the  wilds  of 
Maine ;  and  at  last  they  bloomed  out  into  the  family  of 
Longfellows,  of  which  we  have  the  poet,  and  our  grand  good 
friend,  Sam  Longfellow,  a  minister  of  our  church  in  Ger- 
mantown,  Pennsylvania.  The  old  family  stays  on  the  hill 
still ;  but  this  new  one  moved  onward,  and  has  caught  this 
new  life,  and  has  made  it  noble  and  beautiful  before  the 
world,  because  there  was  this  fine  daring  in  them  to  go  on- 
ward, while  the  old  family  remained  still  in  the  old  family 
nest. 

That  was  also,  in  the  deeper  spiritual  sense,  the  truth  with 
our  Channing,  He,  migrating  from  the  old  fastnesses  to  the 
new,  has  made  it  nobler  and  more  beautiful  to  those  who 
have  to  live  in  it.     It  was  because  of  this  that  he  became  the 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  21$ 

man  he  was.  It  is  because  of  this  that  we  love  him  and 
revere  him,  and  speak  of  him  with  this  affection  as  we  gather 
together  to-night.  He  was  the  apostle  of  a  new  and  nobler 
life ;  and  it  was  sufficient  to  him  that  under  God  he  was 
able  to  do  his  day's  work  in  his  short  day. 

Shall  I  say  that  I  love  him  also  for  this  ?  I  notice  sick 
men  arc  like  sick  cats :  they  like  to  go  mto  a  corner,  and  be 
let  alone.  They  do  not  like  the  movement  of  their  time. 
They  cease  to  grow  aggressive.  Everything  may  go  as  it 
will,  but  they  do  not  want  to  be  bothered.  Channing  was 
a  sick  man.  From  the  time  he  came  from  the  South,  you 
know,  to  the  time  he  died,  he  did  not  know  what  it  was  to 
be  strong,  and  stand  the  racket  of  every  day  like  a  man 
such  as  our  friend  Mr.  Beecher,  for  instance.  [Applause.] 
And  yet,  with  that  delicate  frame,  all  the  time  wondering 
what  he  should  eat  and  what  he  should  drink  and  where- 
withal he  should  be  clothed,  having  in  this  very  constitution 
and  make  of  him  conditions  of  creeping  away  out  of  active 
life,  and  being  quiet  somewhere  in  a  corner,  and  getting  off 
his  sermons,  some  such  sermons  as  our  friend  described  just 
now,  in  which  everybody  will  feel  good  and  everybody  will 
be  peaceful,  and  go  home  and  say,  "What  a  capital  sermon!" 
and  care  nothing  at  all  about  it, —  a  man  with  such  a  con- 
stitution, we  would  think,  would  drive  in  that  direction ;  but 
he  gave  his  heart  and  he  gave  his  life  utterly,  regardless  of 
the  pain,  of  the  fatigue,  of  the  work,  of  the  wear  and  tear 
of  it,  to  those  great  purposes  for  which  God  had  sent  him 
into  the  world. 

I  told  them  last  Sunday,  when  I  was  talking  about  him, 
that  I  used  to  have  a  coat  of  Channing's.  It  went  up  in 
the  fire,  as  nearly  all  things  did  in  Chicago,  He  gave  it  to 
Conant,  and  Conant  left  it  to  me  at  his  death.  It  was  the 
coat  of  a  boy.  "  How  in  the  world,"  I  said,  "did  you  manage 
to  do  such  a  grand  work  on  earth  with  that  poor,  lean  body 


2l6  ClIANMNG    CF.NTENARV. 

of  v'Hirs  ? "  If  I  ever  do  take  to  worshipping  a  saint,  I  am 
going  to  worship  Channing.  It  is  this  that  draws  me  to 
him,  —  that  with  his  poor  chance  of  doing  anything  he  should 
have  done  so  much. 

Brother  Ellis  said,  just  now,  that  Dr.  Chauncy  was  one 
of  the  grand  men  of  the  former  days;  and  I  was  reminded 
of  an  anecdote  that  T  read  about  him,  tlrat  he  wrote  one  of 
those  progressive  books  in  the  direction  of  the  doctrine  of 
Universalism,  and  hid  it  in  his  desk,  and  durst  not  bring  it 
out  to  daylight.  Channing  never  wrote  a  word  that  he  did 
not  show  to  the  world,  no  matter  what  folks  might  have  to 
say;  and  he  did  find  those  that  were  not  in  the  heartiest 
sympathy  with  him  in  Boston.  There  he  stood,  four-square, 
—  if  you  can  apply  such  a  term  as  four-square  to  such  a  little 
body, —  to  every  wirtd  that  blew,  and  let  the^m  blow  and  blow, 
and  fought  his  battle,  and  then,  like  a  brave  man,  thought 
less  of  what  he  had  done  than  any  other  man  on  earth.  Ah ! 
we  may  well  think  tenderly  of  him,  and  we  may  well  think 
with  pride  of  him. 

And  now,  Mr.  Chairman,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  want  to 
say  one  word  more ;  and  that  is,  through  this  great,  free  soul, 
we  are  freer  to-day,  far  and  wide.  That  is  a  nobler  thought ; 
and  I  trust  we  will  all  think  more  nobly,  and,  because  he  has 
lived,  we  can  all  live  better. 

Our  dear  friend,  in  his  speech  just  now,  spoke,  you  know, 
of  Channing's  being  above,  and  in  a  great  measure  aloof 
from,  what  he  himself  had  done;  that  his  sermons  were  but 
one  part  of  the  grand  work,  and  might  not  by  himself  be 
considered  to  be  at  all  so  grand  as  many  consider  them  to 
DC  now.  It  reminded  me  of  a  day  which  came  once  when 
I  got,  I  was  going  to  say,  aggravated,  reading  a  poem  of 
somebody  in  Philadelphia,  which  bears  the  title  "No  Sect 
in  Heaven."  The  aggravation  arose  out  of  this,  that  I  did 
not  find    Unitarians   there  in   any  shape  whatever.     There 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  217 

were  the  Baptists  and  the  Methodists,  the  Episcopalians  and 
the  Quakers;  but  there  were  no  Unitarians.  And  I  said,  "I 
am  going  to  make  an  improvement  on  that,"  very  much  as 
the  Yorkshire  man  thought  he  could  make  an  improve- 
ment on  the  Lord's  Prayer  by  making  it  read,  "  O  Lord,  give 
us  this  day  our  daily  bread,  and  some  cheese."  [Laugh- 
ter.] I  said,  "I  will  write  something  for  the  Unitarians"; 
and  this  is  what  I  got  off.  I  remember  after  having  got 
them  all  in  heaven  safe  and  sound,  as  the  other  poem  got 
them,  I  jotted  down  these  lines:  — 

Then  one  came,  saying,  with  low,  sweet  voice : 

"I  have  sermons  here :  they'd  the  world  rejoice. 

I  must  bear  them  on  to  the  shining  shore. 

And  make  joy  in  heaven  for  evermore." 

But,  as  twilight  is  lost  in  the  springing  day. 

Doctrine  and  dogma  melted  away. 

And  Dr.  Channing  cared  no  more 

For  the  word  he  had  said  on  the  time-bound  shore. 

And  Parker  said,  "  I  have  sermons  seven. 

That  must  be  read  in  the  courts  of  heaven." 

But  the  sermons  seven  went  down  like  lead 

In  the  waters  that  run  between  living  and  dead. 

[Applause.] 

The  Chairman. —  Rev.  Dr.  Pullman,  of  the  Sixth  Univer- 
salist  Church  in  New  York,  will  say  a  few  Vv^ords  to  you  now. 

EEMARKS-  OF  REV.  J.  M.  PULLMAN,  D.D. 

Mr.  CJiairman,  Ladies,  and  Gcntlemeii, — If  it  ever  happens 
to  you  to  be  called  u{X)n  to  apologize  for  not  being  some- 
body else,  you  will  be  able  to  enter  into  my  feelings  at  this 
moment.  I  am  an  eleventh-hour  man  ;  and  I  am  here  be- 
cause Dr.  Chapin  is  sick  and  cannot  come.  But,  finding 
myself  in  so  brilliant  a  presence,  I  suppose  I  must  act  by  tlie 
law  of  contraries;  and,  since  I  cannot  speak  at  all  like  Dr. 
Chapin,  I  must  speak  as  differently  from  him  as  I  can, — and 


•2lS  CHANNING   CENTENARY. 

I  can  assure  you  it  is  very  easy  for  me  not  to  speak  like  Dr. 
Chapin.  And  I  would  not  be  here,  honorable  as  I  esteem 
this  position,  if  I  did  not  know  how  sorry  the  Doctor  is  that 
he  cannot  be  here ;  how  interested  he  is  in  this  meeting, 
how  he  loved  the  subject  of  it,  and  how  all  the  throbs  of  his 
<^reat  heart  are  towards  tliis  house  to-night.  Under  the  cir- 
cumstances, I  feel  that  I  ought  to  stand  up  here  and  say  my 
Universalist  word  of  praise,  whether  I  say  it  very  well  or  not. 

I  labor  under  an  embarrassment  in  trying  to  say  that  word 
here  to-ijight.  I  feel  as  I  were  between  Scylla  and  Charyb- 
dis.  I  loved  Channing  very  deeply  and  very  dearly;  and  I 
loved  him  for  the  very  things  that  the  world  at  his  time  did 
not  love  him  for.  And  how  shall  I,  in  an  assembly  like  this, 
gathered  from  all  churches,  of  all  shades  of  opinion,  in  beauti- 
ful amity  and  accord,  go  on  and  praise  him  for  those  things 
that  I  love  him  for,  and  not  jar  some  discordant  note.?  It 
would  be  better  for  me,  doubtless,  not  to  say  anything  about 
those  matters  ;  and  yet,  if  I  speak  about  a  man  who  loved 
the  truth  as  he  did,  and  who  taught  me,  in  my  little  way,  to 
love  it,  I  must  say  what  I  think.  So  I  am  between  the  Uni- 
tarian Scylla  and  the  Orthodox  Charybdis. 

You  know  we  live  in  the  days  when  something  that  is 
called  the  "Channing  influence"  has  broadened  out,  and 
deepened,  and  sharpened  down  into  —  what  shall  I  say,  and 
be  respectful  and  nice  as  I  would  like  to  be.'  —  I  will  only 
say  that  it  has  come  to  something  that  was  in  that  young 
gentleman  who  threw  his  Euclid  aside  the  other  day,  because 
the  propositions  were  too  dogmatically  stated.  He  said  that 
he  really  thought  he  had  a  right  to  doubt  whether  there  was 
that  equality  in  the  angles  of  an  equilateral  triangle  which 
the  author  insisted  so  much  upon. 

A  general  adviser  of  mankind,  who  has  broken  out  down 
East  of  late  years,  and  broken  out  very  well, —  and  who  ad- 
vises very  well,  too, —  has  said,  recently,  that  by  putting  his 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  219 

ear  to  the  ground  he  can  hear  the  retreating  lootsteps  of 
Channing's  influence,  or  words  to  that  effect.  Of  course,  I 
must  be  careful  here.  I  know  where  the  rock  is,  here  and 
there;  but  I  cannot  help  saying,  men  and  brethren,  that  it 
cannot  be  very  difficult  for  one  who  commits  himself  to  the 
statement  that  Channing's  influence  is  waning  to  put  his 
ear  to  the  ground.  [Laughter.]  If  Channing's  influence  is 
not  making  as  much  stir  in  the  world  to-day  as  it  seemed  to 
be  making  thirty  or  forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  it  is  for  the  same 
reason  that  the  water  that  comes  up  through  my  house  to  the 
cistern  in  the  attic  does  not  make  a  noise  after  a  while, —  it 
is  because  the  tank  is  full ;  and  if  Channing's  influence  does 
not  seem  to  be  as  extensive  as  it  was  in  the  earlier  days,  if  it 
seems  to  be  departing  from  that  level  and  going  downward, 
it  is  for  the  same  reason  that  the  water  of  the  reservoir 
up  here  sometimes  departs  from  its  level,  and  goes  down 
through  a  million  pipes,  and  is  feeding  a  million  households. 
I  stand  for  the  perpetuity  of  the  influence  which  I  feel  so 
clearly  in  myself. 

If  one  should  ask  me  what  I  think  is  the  thing  for  which 
William  Ellery  Channing  will  be  remembered  and  loved  and 
enshrined  among  the  world's  few  great  men,  I  should  take 
the  broadest  generalization  I  am  to  make,  and  say.  It  is 
because  he  taught  men  to  think  nobly  of  God  by  thinking 
nobly  of  themselves.  No  man  that  does  not  think  nobly  of 
God  can  act  nobly ;  and,  the  more  nobly  men  arc  taught  to 
think  of  God,  the  more  nobility  you  will  find  in  their  daily 
conduct.  Is  it  not  so  .''  And  is  it  not  true  that  Dr.  Channins 
himself  said,  in  the  preface  to  one  of  liis  publisli^d  works, 
that,  among  all  the  things  there  written  down,  there  was  this 
one  above  all  others, —  his  confidence  in  the  essential  worth 
of  human  nature,  and  his  disposition  to  stand  up  for  human 
liberty.?  And  men  thought,  "Why,  if  you  elevate  the  ch.ir- 
acter  of  men,  if  you  make  them  think  too  well  of  themselves, 


220  CIIy\NNING    CENTENARY. 

by  SO  much  you  lower  God."  They  seemed  to  think  that,  in 
order  to  get  contrast  enough,  you  must  make  men  abject, 
prone  upon  their  faces,  and  that  then  God  will  be  better 
l^leased.  Men  and  brethren  of  all  churches,  and  of  no 
church,  it  does  not  turn  out  so.  Those  men  who  have  been 
taught  to  feel  their  own  moral  ability,  and  who  have  been 
taught  to  know  that  of  themselves  they  can  do  right,  are 
the  men  that  think  nobly  and  speak  nobly  of  God  in  all 
churches,  and  everywhere. 

I  want  to  say,  before  I  close,  that,  so  dearly  do  I  prize 
what  has  sometimes  been  called  the  dogmatism  of  Channing, 
I  wish  it  might  go  further.  I  do  love  to  see  such  a  spectacle 
in  imagination  as  some  happy  people  saw  in  reality  in  that 
church  in  Baltimore,  when  he  preached  his  famous  sermon  at 
the  ordination  of  Jared  Sparks.  It  must  have  been  grand  to 
have  seen  that  slight,  pale  man,  with  deep  eyes  that  looked 
through  all  things,  and  to  have  heard  him  say  :  "  We  all  agree 
externally,  do  we  not,  upon  the  character  of  God, —  as  to  his 
goodness,  as  to  his  holiness,  and  as  to  his  power  ?  Yes  : 
externally  we  do  ;  but  it  is  possible  to  speak  magnificently  of 
God,  and  to  think  very  meanly  of  him, —  to  apply  high-sound- 
ing epithets  to  God  personally,  and  to  apply  principles  to  his 
government  that  are  odious."  And  then  he  went  on  to  de- 
scribe the  reasons  why  he  loved  and  trusted  and  worshipped 
God, —  that  he  did  it  not  simply  because  God  had  power,  but 
because  that  power  was  good,  and  was  exerted  for  good  ;  not 
because  he  was  a  Ruler  only,  but  because  he  was  a  good 
Ruler.  And  then  came  that  grand  sentence,  which  I  know 
I  shall  ne^er  forget, —  "  We  respect  nothing  but  excellence 
on  earth  or  in  heaven."  Am  I  wrong,  men  and  brethren, 
when  I  say  that  in  the  development  of  the  intellectual  and 
spiritual  life  of  Channing  he  grew  toward  the  Christ,  and 
not  away  from  him  .!"  Have  I  erred  in  drawing  from  his 
words  those  thoughts  that  seem  to  me  to  indicate  that,  the 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  221 

longer  and  the  more  closely  he  looked,  the  more  dearly  he 
loved  the  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ?  I  maybe  mis- 
taken,—  I  know  upon  what  rock  I  am  running, —  but  I 
believe  that  from  my  heart  and  soul. 

So  I  speak  for  the  Universalist  Church,  who  sec  in  Chan-* 
ning  the  exemplification  of  that  which  they  consider  their 
central  light  and  doctrine,  of  the  moral  perfection  of  the 
Almighty.  The  corollary  which  follows  from  this  is  the  final 
extinction  of  moral  evil  ;  and,  taking  him  as  one  of  those  who 
has  contributed  so  largely  to  a  result  everywhere  so  desirable 
and  noble,  how  can  I  better  close  this  short  address  than  in 
the  words  of  Dean  Stanley,  as  quoted  for  us  from  Norman 
Macleod,  speaking  from  the  general  aspect  of  the  man  ? 
"  A  man  broad  with  the  breadth  of  the  charity  of  Almighty 
God,  and  narrow  with  the  narrowness  of  his  righteousness." 
[Applause.] 

The  assembly  then  rose  and  sang,  as  before,  the  following 
selected  hymn  :  — 

Come,  kingdom  of  our  God, 

Sweet  reign  of  light  and  love  ; 
Shed  peace  and  hope  and  joy  abroad, 

And  wisdom  from  above. 
Over  our  spirits  first 

Extend  thy  healing  reign ; 
There  raise  and  quench  the  sacred  thirst 

That  never  pains  again. 
Come,  kingdom  of  our  God, 

And  make  the  broad  earth  thine  ; 
Stretch  o'er  her  lands  and  isles  the  rod 

That  flowers  with  grace  divine. 
Soon  may  all  tribes  be  blest 

With  fruit  from  life's  glad  tree  ; 
And  in  its  shade  like  brothers  rest, 

Sons  of  one  family. 

The  Chairman. —  I  now  have  the  honor  to  present  to  you 
the  Hon.  George  William  Curtis.     [Applause.] 


222  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

ADDRESS  OF  MR.  CURTIS. 

Mr.  President,  Ladies,  and  Gentlemen, —  As  a  son  of 
Rhdde  Island,  I  have  peculiar  pride  and  pleasure  in  this 
day.  Mv  native  State  is  small,  but  it  is  rich  in  great  mem- 
ories and  in  great  men.  The  stone  of  religious  liberty, 
which  my  Brother  Ellis's  Massachusetts  rejected,  became 
the  head  of  the  corner  in  Rhode  Island  ;  and  upon  the  foun- 
dation principle  of  that  little  State  is  reared  the  vast  super- 
structure of  the  civil  and  religious  liberty  of  America. 

And  look  with  me,  for  an  instant,  at  the  contributions  of 
Rhode  Island  to  American  history.  In  our  earliest  epoch, 
it  gave  us  Roger  Williams,  its  founder, —  the  preacher,  not 
of  religious  tolerance,  but  of  absolute  religious  liberty,  who 
held  that  the  Quaker  and  the  Puritan  who  hung  the  Quaker, 
that  George  Fox  and  John  Endicott,  were  both  of  them  too 
narrow  for  the  broad  church  of  soul-liberty.  To  the  Revolu- 
tion, Rhode  Island  gave  General  Greene,  the  friend  of  Wash- 
ington, and  Esek  Hopkins,  the  first  Commodore,  the  first 
Commander-in-chief,  of  the  American  Navy.  To  the  later 
war  with  Britain,  Rhode  Island  gave  Commodore  Perry,  who 
upon  Lake  Erie  met  the  enemy,  and  they  were  his.  And, 
last  of  all,  my  native  State  gave  to  America  and  the  world, 
to  liberty  and  to  humanity,  William  Ellery  Channing.  [Ap- 
plause.] 

Among  the  thousand  tributes  of  reverence  and  of  love 
that  are  to-day  paid  to  his  memory,  I  have  been  asked  to 
say  to  you  a  word  of  his  anti-slavery  career.  Why,  Mr.  Presi- 
dent, there  is  not  a  man  who  shall  speak  of  him  who  will 
■not  speak  of  that.  Every  breath  he  drew  was  an  anti-sla- 
very inspiration.  Every  word  he  uttered  was  an  anti-slavery 
battle.  Wherever  he  saw  a  chain  binding  the  human  soul 
or  the  human  body,  he  struck  it,  and  he  broke  it, —  not  with 
'die  might  of  the  trip-hammer  that  shatters,  but  with  the 
'ouch  of  the  sunbeam  that  melts. 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  22$ 

Channing  was  one  of  the  three  great  spiritual  emanci- 
pators in  our  history.  The  first  was  Roger  WilHams  ;  the 
second  was  Channing ;  the  third,  in  a  later  generation,  was 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.  [Applause.]  They  all  held  to  what 
Roger  Williams  called  "soul-liberty."  They  all  asserted  that 
moral  independence  was  the  sole  source  of  moral  power; 
that  the  moment  any  man  looked  for  his  duty  to  the  plat- 
form of  a  party,  or  to  the  creed  of  a  sect,  or  to  any  authority, 
to  any  source,  but  his  own  conscience,  which  is  God  in  him, 
that  moment  he  lost  his  moral  liberty.  And,  sir,  I  rejoice  to 
see  this  great  and  brilliant  assembly,  at  a  time  when  every 
mind  in  the  country  is  forecasting  the  vast  excitements  of 
the  Presidential  election,  when  passions  and  ambitions,  and 
hopes  and  prejudices  of  every  kind,  are  fiercely  inflamed. 
The  serene  memory  of  a  man  like  Channing  falls  upon  us 
like  a  benediction  of  manly  courage  and  peace.  For  so  long, 
fellow-citizens,  as  we  are  true  to  his  principles ;  so  long  as,. 
in  a  country  of  sects  and  parties,  we  hold  them  as  servants, 
and  not  as  masters ;  so  long  as  we  trample  under  our  feet  the 
familiar  ecclesiastical,  the  familiar  political  sophistries,  scorn- 
ing their  scorn,  despising  their  contempt,  excommunicating 
their  excommunications, —  so  long  we  shall  understand  the 
mysterious  saying  that  one  with  God  is  a  majority  ;  and  our 
beloved  country  will  be  truly  invincible  because  truly  free. 

The  supreme  passion  of  Channing's  life  —  if  I  may  use 
such  a  word  to  describe  a  man  so  passionless,  or,  rather,  who 
held  all  his  powers  and  passions  under  so  strict  control  — 
was  love  of  liberty.  To  him  God  was  perfect  love  and  per- 
fect freedom.  It  was  this  which  made  him  intensely  indi- 
vidual, and  it  was  this  which  gave  him  his  profound  sense 
of  the  worth  of  man  as  man. 

He  lived  in  a  time  of  tremendous  controversies, —  political, 
theological,  social.  He  was  always  a  teacher  of  the  teach- 
ers, a  leader  of  the  leaders;  but  he  bore  himself  throughout 


224  CllANiNING    CENTENAR\'. 

Willi  absolute  heroism  and  independence,  always  serene, 
superior,  solitary.  His  manner  was  as  gentle  and  sweet  as 
the  dew  that  falls  on  Hcrmon ;  but  his  convictions,  rooted 
upon  the  Internal  Centre,  were  as  absolutely  uncompromising 
as  the  mountain  upon  which  the  dews  of  Hermon  fall.  And 
as  to-ilay  we  look  back  into  that  stormy  time,  as  we  catch 
a  glimpse  of  that  slight  figure  and  seraphic  glance  amid  the 
hea\ings  of  the  tempestuous  epoch,  amid  the  contentions 
of  statesmen,  of  politicians,  of  theologians,  of  reformers,  we 
seem  to  see  a  fervent  and  penetrating  flame  that  purifies 
while  it  illuminates;  and  we  catch  at  least  some  glimpse  of 
that  essential  and  innate  dignity  of  human  nature  which 
was  his  profound  faith,  and  the  theme  of  his  transcendent 
eloquence. 

Mr.  President,  I  can  hardly  believe,  as  I  look  around 
upon  this  audience,  that  there  are  so  many  who  honor  me 
at  this  moment  with  their  attention,  so  many  young  men 
and  so  many  young  women  who  have  no  personal  remem- 
brance of  our  great  anti-slavery  debate.  It  was  a  question 
which  involved  a  wrong  against  human  nature,  a  crime 
against  liberty,  so  immense  and  so  intolerable  that  it  neces- 
sarily overshadowed  all  other  questions ;  and  if  I  have  given 
you,  in  the  few  words  that  I  have  spoken,  my  idea  of  the 
golden  key  that  unlocks  the  whole  career  of  Channing,  you 
will  understand  where  a  man,  arrayed  by  the  very  law  of  his 
nature  against  despotism,  necessarily  stood  in  that  great  con- 
flict. The  question  was  absolutely  unavoidable.  Ah!  sir,  I 
si)eak  to  men  who  remember  with  me  how  we  sought  to 
escape  it.  I  speak  to  men  who  remember  how  we  evaded  the 
omnipresent  issue,  how  we  said  that  it  belonged  to  the  South ; 
that  it  was  so  "nominated  in  the  bond,"  that  it  was  not  our 
affair,  that  we  were  morally  free  from  taint.  Why,  human 
slavery,  as  it  existed  in  this  country,  was  a  cancer  which  could 
live  only  by  tainting  the  sound  flesh  around  it ;  and,  by  the 


CELEBRATION    AT    BROOKLYN.  225 

veiy  law  of  its  being,  slavery  within  the  Union  necessarily 
encroached  upon  freedom  within  the  Union.  It  was  every- 
where. It  was  not  to  be  evaded.  Beyond  the  Mississippi, 
the  free  laborer,  planting  his  happy  home  and  singing  at  his 
work  in  the  free  territory,  suddenly  found  himself  confronted 
Dy  the  spectre  of  slavery,  in  the  persons  of  the  overseer  and 
his  gang,  to  dispute  with  slaves  the  bread  of  freedom. 

It  was  not  beyond  the  Mississippi  alone;  but  the  panting 
fugitive,  guilty  of  no  crime  but  color,  taking  his  life  in  his 
hand,  tracked  by  blood-hounds,  suffering  torments  which  have 
not  been  written,  and  following  his  only  friend,  the  cold 
north  star  in  heaven,  fled  across  the  border,  and  here,  in 
your  very  Brooklyn  streets,  cowering  and  starving  and 
knocking  upon  your  own  doors,  brought  home  to  you,  at 
your  hearthstone,  the  crime  and  the  appalling  sorrow  of 
slavery. 

Nor  on  the  land  alone,  but  on  the  sea, —  far  out  on  the 
ocean,  beyond  the  sight  of  land, —  innocent  men,  overpower- 
ing other  men  who,  for  their  own  gain  only,  had  robbed  them 
of  their  liberty,  were  obliged  to  go  somewhere  to  shore,  and, 
coming  to  our  coast,  piteously  appealed  to  the  protection  of 
our  flag;  and  the  government  which  that  flag  symbolized 
hesitated  and  demurred.  But  let  me  say  it  to  the  eternal 
honor  of  a  man  then  living,  an  ex-President  of  the  United 
States,  whose  heart  and  mind  echoed  the  pitiful  cry  that  he 
heard,  personally  a  friend  of  Channing,  and  also  of  the  relig- 
ious faith  of  Channing,  but  with  the  ability,  with  the  instinct 
of  a  moral  gladiator,  that  he,  virtually  alone  in  Congress, 
with  his  strong  hand  and  his  dauntless  will  upheld  American 
liberty  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  maintained  for  us 
the  fundamental  American  principle  of  the  right  of  petition, 
and  in  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  made  the 
poor  foreign  slaves,  the  slaves  of  the  "Amistad,"  his  clients, 
and  gave  them  liberty. 


226  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

When  I  think  of  this  man,  I  see  John  Pym  in  the  Com- 
mons, thundering  against  Charles  Stuart;  I  see  Lord  Mans- 
field upon  the  King's  Bench,  declaring  that  there  cannot  be 
a  slave  in  England :  and  I  feel  that,  in  the  darkest  hour  of 
American  history,  America  and  human  liberty  had  no  truer 
friend  than  John  Quincy  Adams.     [Applause.] 

Well,  this  was  the  contest  with  which  Channing  was  con- 
fronted. There  was  not  a  man  in  this  country  who  could 
feel  the  crime  more  deeply  than  he,  and  you  will  see  at  once 
tiiat  two  things  were  to  be  expected  of  him.  He  would  be 
one  of  the  earliest  and  most  intrepid  of  the  anti-slavery 
leaders,  and  he  would  not  be  identified  with  the  party  known 
as  abolitionists.  On  reading  our  history,  you  will  find  that 
both  of  these  facts  are  verified  by  the  record. 

Channing,  by  temperament,  by  the  intense  individuality 
of  which  I  have  spoken,  represents  everywhere  the  indi- 
vidual force,  the  individual  influence.  His  refinement,  his 
sensitiveness  of  temperament,  and  his  overpowering  sense 
of  justice  made  him,  more  than  any  man  in  the  country, 
alive  to  what  he  conceived  to  be  the  excesses  and  the  per- 
sonalities of  reform. 

Now,  fellow-citizens,  I  do  not  read  Channing  aright,  if 
it  was  the  bitterness  of  invective,  so  much  as  what  seemed 
to  him  its  injustice,  which  kept  him  solitary  in  the  great 
awakening.  He  had  no  personal  aim.  He  had  no  private 
ambition.  All  his  ends  were  God's,  his  country's  and 
truth's, —  these  and  nothing  more.  His  object  was  always 
a  moral  object.  It  was  persuasion  ;  and  therefore  he  recoiled 
from  vituperation,  and  denounced  it,  as  defeating  the  very 
object  of  the  reform.  Whatever  made  persuasion,  in  his 
judgment,  impossible,  was  to  him  a  flagrant  crime  against 
the  cause,  and  a  betrayal  of  the  slave  himself. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  abolitionists,  viewing  this 
question   with   their   conscience,   with   their   knowledge   of 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  22/ 

mankind,  with  their  experience  of  daily  affairs,  considered 
moderation  treachery.  They  regarded  Channing  as  a  man 
who  compromised,  and  who  might  even  be  accused  of 
cowardice.  But  Samuel  J.  May,  one  of  those  saintly  soulf 
akin  to  Channing's,  early  caught  up  in  the  ardor  of  thij 
great  crusade  of  humanity,  tells  us  that  Channing,  always 
open,  always  generous,  as  Mr.  Collyer  has  said,  to  every 
claim  of  every  man  and  of  every  cause,  asked  him  perpet- 
ually how  that  cause  was  coming  on,  and  one  day  reproved 
Mr.  May  for  what  he  considered  to  be  the  extravagance 
of  reform.  Mr.  May  tells  us  that  he  at  once  responded, 
"Well,  Dr.  Channing;  God  works  with  such  instruments 
as  he  can  find.  He  has  called  the  world,  he  has  called  the 
mighty,  he  has  called  the  leaders  of  men,  and  they  have  not 
answered.  We  have  come  in  from  the  hedges  and  from  the 
ditches,  we  have  come  in  from  the  highways  and  by-ways, 
and  are  here  to  do  our  work.  Look  to  it,  sir,  look  to  it; 
for  the  work  in  the  Master's  vineyard  will  be  surely  done. 
Is  it  not  time,  sir,  that  you  spoke.''"  Mr.  May  said  that 
the  moment  he  had  uttered  this  reproof  to  Channing  he  sat 
drooping  before  him,  not  knowing  what  the  rebuke  might 
be ;  but  Channing,  with  the  utmost  simplicity,  answered : 
"Brother  May,  I  feel  the  justice  of  that  reproof.  I  have 
kept  silence  too  long." 

I  do  not,  for  myself,  think  that  he  had  kept  silence  in 
an  unjust  sense.  Every  word,  every  act  of  his,  had  been 
charged  with  the  anti-slavery  spirit ;  and  of  his  great  co- 
laborer,  William  Lloyd  Garrison  [applause],  and  Dr.  Chan- 
ning,—  both  residents  of  the  same  city,  both  moved  by  the 
same  inspiration,  both  pursuing  the  same  end,  but  abso- 
lutely different  in  temperament  and  training, —  all  we  "can 
say  is,  as  of  all  the  resplendent  planets  in  the  great  heaven 
of  that  agitation,  "One  star  diffcreth  from  another  star  in 
glory." 


228  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

For,  from  the  beginning,  when  Channing  was  born,  a 
lunuhcd  years  ago  to-day  in  Newport,  Newport  was  a  slave 
trading  port.  Its  public  opinion  was  what  the  public  opin- 
ion of  New  York  was  when  the  anti-slavery  agitation  began 
Down  to  the  period  just  before  the  war,  the  public  opinion 
of  New  York  was  expressed  by  one  of  its  greatest  merchants, 
when  he  said,  "There  will  be  no  peace  in  this  country  until 
men  like  Charles  Sumner  are  hung."  In  that  one  remark, 
those  who  were  not  familiar  with  those  days  may  understand 
what  those  days  were. 

Well,  in  the  old  Newport  in  which  Channing  was  born, 
his  first  preacher,  in  the  church  to  which  his  father  went, 
was  old  Dr.  Hopkins,  who  preached  every  Sunday  the  terrors 
of  hell  to  a  poor  congregation  in  a  desolate  church,  and  who 
insisted  to  them  that  the  final  test  of  true  faith  was  the  will- 
ingness to  be  damned  for  the  glory  of  God.  [Laughter.] 
Old  Dr.  Hopkins,  preaching  that  faith,  was  still  a  worthy 
embassador  of  Him  who  came  to  break  every  bond.  And  it 
was  from  his  lips,  from  his  life,  and  from  the  whole  adverse 
stress  of  public  opinion  there  in  Newport,  that  Dr.  Channing 
first  acquired  his  hostility  to  slavery  as  it  existed  in  this 
country. 

Then,  when  he  is  eighteen  years  of  age,  just  at  the  very 
beginning  of  the  century,  he  goes  to  Richmond  to  teach. 
And  he  writes  home  from  Richmond,  "  Except  for  their  sen- 
suality and  their  slavery," — two  considerable  exceptions, — 
"  the  Virginians  would  be  the.  finest  people  in  the  world." 

In  1830,  when  Garrison  began  his  Liberator  Dr.  Chan- 
ning was  in  Santa  Cruz  for  his  health.  But  in  Santa  Cruz, 
amid  all  the  delights  of  Elysium,  he  could  see  and  feel  but 
one  thing.  Like  the  princess  in  the  fairy  tale  who  could  not 
sleep  upon  a  hundred  beds  of  down  because  of  the  little 
pebble  under  them  all,  so  he  could  not  rejoice  in  all  the 
splendor  and  prosperous  luxuriance  of  the  tropics,  knowing 


CELEBRATION    AT    BROOKLYN.  2^9 

the  injustice  to  human  nature  that  was  beneath  its  whole 
social  system. 

When  he  returned  to  Boston,  he  stood  in  the  pulpit  of  a 
congregation  panoplied  in  as  obdurate  a  respectability  against 
every  form  of  agitation  of  the  anti-slavery  question  as  any 
congregation  in  the  land.  Yet  he  did  not  hesitate  to  say,  as 
he  stood  meekly  before  them,  "  I  have  been  in  Santa  Cruz. 
I  have  seen  in  Santa  Cruz  the  mildest  form  of  human  slavery ; 
and  in  its  mildest  form,  brethren,  human  slavery  is  the  de- 
stroyer of  the  soul." 

In  1835  and  in  1837,  he  published  his  essay  upon  Slavery, 
and  his  letter  upon  Texas  to  Henry  Clay.  I  challenge  for 
those  two  documents  the  merit  of  being  the  most  permanent 
and  imperishable  contributions  to  the  literature  of  the  anti- 
slavery  cause,  as  expressing  its  fundamental  reason  and  prin- 
ciple and  scope. 

I  do  not  forget  for  a  moment  —  how  could  I  in  this  pres- 
ence.''—  the  words  of  the  prophet,  and  the  John  Knox  of- 
that  movement,  of  whom  I  have  already  spoken,  Mr.  Garri- 
son. [Applause.]  I  do  not  forget  the  mingled  trumpet  and 
flute  of  the  speech  of  Phillips,  which  has  so  often  filled  this 
very  building  with  the  truest  music  of  eloquence.  [Ap- 
plause.] I  do  not  forget  that  great  appeal,  that  romance, 
in  which  the  whole  life  of  slavery  was  figured,  which  was 
borne  into  every  land,  which  was  translated  into  every  lan- 
guage, and  which  melted  the  heart  of  the  world,  as  it  pon- 
dered the  career  of  "  Uncle  Tom."  [Applause.]  I  do  not 
forget  that,  as  Emerson  said,  in  every  anti-slavery  meeting 
the  eloquence  was  dog-cheap.  But  the  plea  of  Channing, 
perfectly  tranquil  in  tone,  stands,  it  seems  to  me,  always 
separate  and  apart.  These  were  his  words  :  "  God  has  not 
intrusted  the  reform  of  the  world  to  passion."  His  argument 
was  a  calm  and  permanent  statement.  It  is  the  argument 
which  our  children's  children  will  read,  and  feel  to  be  invlnci- 


230  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

ble.  It  will  not  have  the  glow,  the  fervor,  the  palpitation  of 
the  speeches  and  the  appeals  to  which  our  hearts  have 
responded ;  but  it  will  shine  always  with  the  calm  light  of 
the  stars. 

Nor  was  ne  wanting —  I  think  my  best  anti-slavery 
friends  will  acknowledge — in  his  fidelity  to  his  profound 
convictien.  The  work  of  our  friend  Mr.  Oliver  Johnson  — 
the  last  contribution  to  the  history  of  the  anti-slavery  reform 
—  tells  us  that  it  was  not  until  1843  that  Mr.  Garrison  felt 
called  upon  to  declare  his  gospel  of  the  dissolution  of  the 
Union,  because  it  was  then  his  feeling  that  the  Union  was 
a  covenant  with  death  and  an  agreement  with  hell.  But  in 
the  essay  upon  Slavery,  eight  years  before,  and  in  his  letter 
to  Mr.  Clay,  five  years  before,  Dr.  Channing  had  done  what 
every  man  in  this  country  was  warned  by  the  statesmen  not 
to  do, —  he  had  weighed  the  value  of  the  Union  ;  and  he  had 
said:  "To  other  men  the  Union  is  a  means,  but  to  me  it  is  an 
end.  I  love  the  Union  with  a  love  surpassing  all  the  feeling 
that  I  have  for  any  American  institution  but  that  of  liberty." 
"We  will  make  every  concession  for  the  Union,"  said  Chan- 
ning, "but  truth,  justice,  and  liberty  :  these  we  will  not  con- 
cede." And  when  he  wrote  to  Clay  in  1837,  he  did  not 
hesitate  to  speak  of  the  consummation  of  the  annexation  of 
Texas  as  a  justification  for  the  separation  of  these  States. 
With  celestial  prescience,  he  knew  that  the  States  could 
not  cohere,  slave  and  free.  He  knew  that  they  would  sepa- 
rate either  by  the  sword  or  by  consent ;  and,  as  a  man 
of  peace,  he  hoped  that  it  might  be  by  consent.  And,  when 
he  said  these  words,  he  seems  to  me  to  have  repeated  those 
great  words  of  Burke, —  "All  government  is  founded  upon 
compromise  and  barter ;  but  in  every  bargain  the  thing  sold 
must  bear  some  proportion  to  the  price  paid.  No  man  will 
barter  away  the  immediate  jewel  of  his  soul."  Channing 
spoke  the  deepest  conviction  of  the  American  people  before 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  23 1 

they  knew  it  themselves.  He  spoke  for  that  love  of  lib- 
erty, for  that  fidelity  to  the  Union,  which,  when  the  trial 
came,  was  sure  to  be  found  supreme.  When  our  Southern 
brethren  made  their  demand,  they  asked  us  to  barter  away 
the  immediate  jewel  of  our  soul.  They  have  had  their 
answer. 

Mr.  President,  many  voices  in  many  lands  are.  at  this 
moment  speaking  of  this  man.  He  is  shown  in  a  hundred 
aspects.  I  have  mentioned  one.  But  turn  this  priceless  dia- 
mond in  your  hand ;  and,  wherever  you  look,  every  smooth 
facet  will  be  as  pure  and  luminous  as  every  other. 

I  never  saw  Channing,  I  never  heard  his  voice ;  but,  walk- 
ing often  in  the  old  Newport  garden  that  he  loved,  I  have 
felt  that  its  sunny  solitude,  penetrated  by  the  cool,  racy 
breath  and  the  infinite  murmur  of  the  neighboring  sea,  was 
the  truest  symbol  of  his  life  and  character. 

We  cannot  truly  appreciate,  nor  fitly  express,  our  debt 
to  the  great  men  who  are  not  specialists,-  who  are  not 
—  if  my  brother  will  allow  me  —  preachers  merely,  nor 
reformers,  but  who  are  great  uplifting  powers  which  supply 
the  thoughts  that  make  civilization,  who  give  us  the  inspira- 
tions that  make  the  glory  of  our  life.  These  things  we  can- 
not express  ;  but  our  deepest  souls  and  all  that  is  noblest 
within  us  respond  to  them,  as  the  shells  strown  upon  that 
Newport  beaj:h  of  his  answer  the  eternal  music  of  the  ocean. 

"Our  echoes  roll  from  soul  to  soul, 
And  grow  forever  and  forever." 

The  heavenly  light  in  those  sweet  eyes  is  long  since 
quenched  ;  the  music  of  that  voice  is  silent ;  that  gentle 
presence  has  vanished  from  men's  sight  forever  ;  that  slight 
figure,  that  trembling  body,  lies  mouldering  in  the  grave. 
But  in  the  greater  spiritual  liberty  that  we  sec,  in  the 
quickened  public  conscience,  in  the  downfall  of  sectarian 
divisions,   in  the  deeper,  higher,  truer  sense  of   the  father- 


~J- 


CHANNING    CENTENARY. 


hood  of   God  and  the  brotherhood  of  men,  that   soul   of  fire 
and  of  love  goes  marching  on.     [Loud  applause.] 

The  Chairman. —  The  Rev.  Dr.  Sims,  of  the  Methodist 
Church,  will  now  address  you. 

ADDRESS  BY  REV,  C.  N.  SIMS,  D.D. 

A  Californian,  with  whom  his  nephew  had  been  long  visit- 
ing, grew  strangely  sad.  The  nephew  anxiously  inquired 
the  cause  of  his  grief,  and  was  surprised  to  hear  his  uncle 
say,  "I  am  so  afraid  you  will  never  come  to  see  me  again." 
"  I  certainly  will,"  said  the  affectionate  young  man.  "  No," 
said  the  uncle,  "  I  think  you  never  will,  for  I  am  afraid  you 
will  never  go  away  this  time." 

Now,  my  friends,  I  do  assure  you  our  meeting  to-night 
will  close  some  time,  so  you  may  have  a  chance  to  come 
again.  In  view  of  the  lateness  of  the  hour,  I  promise  to 
be  extremely  brief.  Indeed,  I  only  speak  at  all,  because  it 
is  fitting  that  I,  and  Mr.  Beecher  who  is  to  follow  me, 
should  put  an  orthodox  finish  to  this  centennial  celebration, 
and  that  it  should  pass  under  orthodox  revision,  as  all  such 
meetings  ought. 

The  world  is  not  rich  enough  in  virtue  or  strength  to  per- 
mit a  great,  good  man  to  be  forgotten.  It  has  no  super- 
abundant accumulation  of  truth,  that  we  can  afford  to  turn 
away  from  any  truth-searcher,  no  matter  though  his  methods 
be  different  from  ours ;  and  we  are  here  to-night,  my  friends, 
to  speak  words  of  grateful  remembrance  of  one  who  was  a 
courageous,  devoted  searcher  after  the  truth,  and  who  conse- 
crated that  truth  to  the  best  interests  of  humanity,  as  he  un- 
derstood them. 

William  Ellery  Channing  is  one  of  the  few  men  who  have 
escaped  death  and  oblivion,  and  who  live  on  forever  in   the 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  233 

truest  life,  because  he  was  a  great  man,  after  the  Master's 
deepest  and  most  profound  definition  of  greatness,  —  being 
the  servant  of  all.  His  influence  upon  the  world  is  twofold. 
It  is  impersonal,  in  so  far  as  it  goes  out  to  affect  general 
thought  and  sentiment.  As  a  rivulet  on  its  way  to  the  river 
gives  its  waters  to  the  atmosphere,  and  then  those  waters  arc 
condensed  into  dew-drops  and  deposited  upon  leaf  and  flower 
and  bud,  and  yet  are  truly  of  the  rivulet,  though  they  may 
not  make  their  way  with  it  to  the  river,  so  there  are  lives 
that  in  their  definite  and  living  influence  quicken  and  refresh 
all  humanity,  long  after  they  themselves  have  disappeared 
from  any  personality  in  the  matter.  But,  beside  that,  there 
is  another  influence  upon  the  general  thought  of  the  world 
as  we  have  studied  him,  the  philanthropist,  the  teacher ;  the 
man  whose  words  and  thoughts  have  been  before  the  world, 
always  fresh,  never  belonging  to  a  departed  or  to  a  decayed 
age  ;  the  glorious  thinker,  searching  after  truth. 

I  speak  of  his  continuous  personal  influence.  To  the 
student  of  his  biography,  who  has  followed  his  labor  and 
struggle  and  thought,  he  is  still  a  most  living  personality, 
able  yet  to  stir  the  thought,  arouse  the  enthusiasm,  and 
inspire  to  noble  efforts  and  purposes.  His  was  the  life  of 
a  great,  consecrated  searcher  after  God's  verities.  He  was  a 
man  who  gave  himself  to  know  the  truth.  Because  the  state- 
ments of  Christian  doctrine  around  him  did  not  satisfy  his 
mind,  he  sought  to  make  other  statements  which  seemed  to 
him  more  correct.  In  order  to  do  his  work,  he  became  a 
great  and  glorious  martyr  for  the  truth  as  he  understood  it, 
willing  to  part  company  with  old  friends,  willing  to  feel 
whatever  pain  he  may  have  felt  in  the  disapprobation  of 
those  under  whom  he  had  been  instructed,  from  whom  he 
had  learned,  and  whom  he  had  loved.  He  parted  company 
with  them  for  conscience'  sake. 

And   so  the  student  of  Channing's   character  comes   to 


234  CHANNING   CENTENARY. 

calcli  ihe  inspiration  of  one  who  loved  the  truth,  not  simply 
to  love  what  Channing  believed.  If  it  were  that,  we  could 
not  all  mingle  here  to-night.  But  we  come  to  stand  where 
he  stood,  on  this  broad  principle  of  loving  the  truth  as  he 
loved  it,  and  to  judge  of  the  truth  for  ourselves  as  he  judged 
of  it  for  himself ;  and  this  inspiration  is  one  which  must 
always  be  healthful  and  lielpful. 

Again,  the  influence  of  his  personal  character  upon  those 
who  study  him  is  felt  in  his  broad,  earnest,  tender,  loving 
philanthropy.  He  was  a  man  of  generous  nature,  one  who 
could  agree  to  honor  those  with  whom  he  disagreed.  Not 
ev^ery  man  can  forgive  his  fellow  for  holding  opinions  not 
in  harmony  with  his  own.  Many  a  one  can  forgive  the  thief 
who  steals  his  watch,  that  cannot  pardon  his  neighbor  who 
fails  to  find  his  faith  expressed  in  the  same  catechism. 
Because  Channing's  soul  was  full  of  sympathy,  he  lives 
largely  in  my  mind  and  in  my  affections.  It  seemed  as  if 
his  heart  was  the  focal  centre  of  a  whispering  gallery  broad 
as  this  wide  world;  and  that  every  sigh  of  human  woe 
and  every  sob  of  human  sorrow  came  to  be  articulate  and 
audible,  as  it  reported  to  his  spirit. 

So  he  came  to  stand  before  the  world  the  advocate 
of  temperance ;  the  advocate  of  freedom ;  the  advocate  of 
religion;  the  man  of  pure  and  noble  life;  the  man  who 
loved  humanity  in  its  loneliness  and  poverty ;  the  Sabbath- 
school  man  ;  the  pastor  who  cared  for  the  poor  and  needy ; 
the  man  whose  broad  and  loving  heart  planned  all  generous 
things  for  all  men  ;  the  man  who  planned  for  the  emigrant, 
for  the  workingman,  for  the  mechanic,  for  the  degraded,  for 
the  imprisoned, —  planned  for  whoever  suffered  or  was  igno- 
rant or  fallen  or  hopeless  in  this  world, —  and  who  longed  to 
lift  up  humanity  toward  the  God  whom  he  worshipped.  He 
was  a  reverent  worshipper  of  God. 

This  world,  my  friends,  is  broad  enough,  God's  love  rich 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  235 

enough,  and  his  character  grand  enough,  for  all  of  us,  with 
our  different  religious  views,  to  stand  on,  and  gaze  straight 
up  into  the  face  of  our  divine  Father,  and  not  be  in  one 
another's  way.  He  loved  God  and  believed  in  him,  and  he 
that  hath  this  hope  in  him  purifieth  himself  even  as  He  is 
pure  ;  and  his  whole  life  grew  beautiful  in  the  sunshine  of 
the  divine  favor  and  love,  and  in  the  light  of  God's  all-seeing 
eye,  with  nothing  evil  hid  away  in  his  heart  or  in  his  hand. 
So  he  gave  his  life  to  humanity.  So  he  lives  on,  having 
escaped  death.  So  to-day,  in  all  that  makes  up  life,  the 
helper  of  the  thinker  and  the  worker,  of  the  student,  and 
the  down-trodden,  he  lives  on.  The  life  of  flesh  is  past. 
He  does  not  any  longer  eat  and  drink,  and  suffer  and  toil  ; 
but  he  helps  humanity,  and  he  will  help  it  through  all  the 
years  that  are  to  come.  And  so,  believing,  as  I  do,  in  the 
essential  divinity  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  in  the  perma- 
nent and  perpetual  power  of  God's  Holy  Spirit,  and  in  the 
doctrine  and  reality  of  genuine  conversion,  I  come  to  lay 
my  chaplet  down  in  memory  of  one  whom  I  honor ;  and  I 
pray  God  that  all  truth  gathered  everywhere  in  this  wide 
world  may  be  consecrated  to  the  service  of  all  men,  and 
that  all  truth-seekers  may  be  honorable  in  the  sight  of 
their  brethren  forever. 

The  Chairman. — Of  course  you  will  all  remain  to  hear 
Mr.  Beecher. 

ADDRESS  OF  EEV.  HENRY  WARD  BEECHER. 

I  do  not  propose  to  speak  to-night  at  any  length.  It  is 
now  a  time  at  which  Dr.  Channing  would  have  been  abed 
and  asleep  for  an  hour.  You  have  had  a  banquet,  if  ever  an 
audience  had ;  and  you  have  also  had  the  benediction  of  a 
good  sound  orthodox  clergyman  at  the  end  of   it.     And  it 


236  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

seems  to  nie  that  the  consent  of  men,  whether  they  are  in 
the  Mother  Church  or  in  any  of  the  scattered  sectarian 
churches,  —  orthodox,  half-orthodox,  or  heterodox,  —  is  all 
gained  to-night,  and  gained  on  one  point :  that  a  man  who 
loves  God  fervently  and  his  fellow-men  heartily,  and  devotes 
his  life  to  that  love,  is  a  member  of  every  communion  and 
of  every  church,  and  is  orthodox  in  spite  of  orthodoxy  or 
anything  else! 

There  is  one  point,  however,  that  has  been  pressed  upon 
my  mind,  as  I  have  been  overwhelmed  with  the  richness 
of  the  thoughts  and  illustrations  of  the  speakers  gone  by. 
So  warm  and  enthusiastic  have  been  the  eulogies  to-night, 
that  one  might  almost  imagine  that  Dr.  Channing  was  him- 
self the  light  of  the  world  !  But  no  ;  so  rich  is  God,  so  all, 
pervading,  so  incarnated  in  every  soul  that  thinks  and  in 
every  heart  that  throbs,  that  Dr.  Channing  was  but  one 
single  taper  shining  in  the  darkness  of  this  world,  and  draw- 
ing his  light  from  the  great  solar  Fountain,  God.  He  was 
the  mouthpiece  of  his  time  ;  but  his  time  had  prepared  the 
material  which  he  expressed.  No  man,  in  any  age,  though 
he  stand  head  and  shoulders  above  his  fellows,  is  competent 
to  do  much  more  than  has  been  wrought  out  for  him, —  to 
be  the  teacher  of  those  things  which  have  been  made  needed 
and  manifestly  needed,  by  the  experience  of  millions  of  men, 
and  to  give  intellectual  expression  to  those  truths  which  in 
their  emotive  form  have  welled  up  in  thousands  and  tens  of 
thousands  of  bosoms.  Dr.  Channing  felt  all  the  accumu- 
lated force,  moral  and  social,  of  the  times  gone  by  and  the 
times  at  hand  in  which  he  lived.  And  so,  though  he  was 
great,  mankind  behind  him  was  greater,  the  time  was  greater, 
and  the  all-informing  spirit  of  God  was  greater  yet. 

In  my  boyhood,  I  went  to  Boston  in  1826,  and  was  thrown 
into  the  very  centre  and  heat  of  that  great  controversy  which 
was  raging,  in  which  my  father  was  an  eloquent  thunderer  on 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  237 

one  side,  and  in  which  Dr.  Channing  was  an  eloquent  silent 
man  on  the  other  side.     Mostly  his  work  had  been  done 
at  that  time.     Do  I  not  remember  the  image  of  that  day  ? 
In  my  own  nature  enthusiastic,  sincere,  and  truthful,  did  not 
what  my  father  thought  become  what  I  thought  ?    And  did 
I  not  know  that  Unitarians  were  the  children  of  the  devil  ? 
And  did  I  not  know  that  those  heresiarchs,  if  they  had  not 
fallen  from  heaven,  ought  to  fall  from  the  earth  ?     And  did  I 
not  regard  Channing,  I  will  not  say  as  a  man  misled,  but  as 
a  man  demented,  in  whom  was  the  spirit  of  error,  leading 
men  down  to  perdition,  and  who  ought  to  be  silenced,  and 
all  of  whose  followers  ought    to  be  scourged  ?     Did  I    not 
read  in  those  days  the  haughty   statement,  the  reply,  the 
rejoinder,    and  then    the    diffusive    controversy   generally .'' 
And   yet   time  has   wrought   with  me,  as   it    has   wrought 
with  you,  and  with  all  men,  wonderful  changes  ;  and  now 
those   two  men,  my  father  and   Dr.   Channing,  that    stood 
over  against   each  other, —  to  my  young  seeming, —  as  wide 
apart  as  the  east  from  the  west,  I  see  standing  together, 
and  travelling  in  precisely  the  same  lines,  and  toward  pre- 
cisely the  same  results.     For  did  not   Lyman  Beecher  feel 
that,  as  the  doctrine  of  God  and  of  moral  government  was 
presented  in  the  day  in  which  he  lived,  the  glory  of  God  was 
obscured,  that  men  were  bound  hand  and  foot,  and  that  the 
sweetness  and  the  beauty  of  the  love  of  Christ  in  the  gospel 
were    misunderstood,   or    even   veiled   and    utterly  hidden } 
And  what  was  he  striving  for  but  such  a  renovation  of  the 
old  orthodoxy  as  should   let   the   light   of  the  glory  of  God, 
as  it  shone  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ,  have  a  fair  chance 
at  folks  ?     And  what  was  Channing  striving  for }     He  felt 
that  the  old  formulas  and  statements  of  men  did  not  let  out 
the  whole  circumference,  nor  did  it  give  the  whole  force  and 
beauty  of  the  character  of  God.     He,  too,  was  driving,  as 
best  he  could,  the   clouds  out   of   heaven,  and  seeking  to 


238  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

make  the  character  of  God  more  resplendent,  and  morally 
more  effective  to  mankind.  And  there  they  stood  bombard- 
ing each  other,  botli  of  them  with  the  same  grand  object 
and  motive;  like  two  valiant  men-of-war,  that  are  giving 
each  other  broadside  after  broadside,  and  yet  are  on  a 
stream  of  Providence  that  is  carrying  them  unconsciously 
in  the  same  direction !  They  sailed  side  by  side,  and  as 
they  met  in  heaven  I  think  they  lifted  up  hands  of  wonder 
and  exclaimed,  "Is  it  possible  that  I  am  here  —  and  you  .? " 

My  estimate  of  Channing  is  not  less  because  my  estimate 
of  the  whole  force  of  society  is  greater.  He  was  one  of  the 
men,  and  but  one, — a  great  and  noble  and  leading  man. 
Ten  thousand  other  things  were  working.  When  Sisera 
was  at  his  battle,  the  stars  in  their  courses,  it  is  said,  fought 
against  him  ;  and,  when  God  hath  great  work  on  hand,  the 
stars,  and  every  thing  that  is  beneath  them,  are  working  in 
one  direction.  The  changes  in  governments,  the  advance  in 
laws,  the  development  of  a  better  political  economy,  the 
evolution  of  commonwealths,  the  progress  of  science  and  of 
the  mechanic  arts,  but  especially  the  science  of  mind,  are 
working  out  a  final  theology  by  working  to  the  same  great 
end, — the  emancipation  of  man,  the  clarity  of  his  under- 
standing, the  sovereignty  of  his  conscience,  the  sympathies 
of  his  soul,  and  the  full  disclosure  of  God,  over  all,  blessed 
forever.  And  it  is  enough  glory  to  say  of  Channing  that 
he  understood  the  day  in  which  he  lived,  and  understood 
that  he  was  appointed  to  be  a  pilot  to  the  times  that  were  to 
come  after ;  and  that  whatever  he  did  administratively  he 
did  intelligently,  that  the  young  and  the  vital  wood  that 
carried  the  sap  and  the  life  of  the  tree  might  have  a  chance. 

Those  who  are  horticulturists  will  understand  that  the 
bark  that  carried  the  sap  last  year  will  have  to  get  out  of 
the  way,  and  let  the  bark  that  comes  on  this  year  have  a 
chance ;  and  the  kind  pomologist,  with  his  knife,  often  slits 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  239 

the  bark  of  the  cherry-tree  that  is  conservative,  to  give  a 
chance  to  that  which  has  a  hereditary  right  to  be  the  bark, 
and  let  the  bark-bound  diameter  of  the  tree  expand  a  little. 
Dr.  Channing,  among  other  men,  used  his  knife  for  the  sake 
of  letting  the  new  truth,  which  was  struggling  for  a  larger 
diameter  in  the  world,  have  a  chance. 

Well,  what  has  been  the  result  ?  That  was  one  hundred 
years  ago  to-day.  And  what  would  Channing  think  if  he 
were  allowed  to  stand  here  to-night.^  He  would  have  been 
half  deaf  by  this  time,  if  he  had  heard  every  thing  that  has 
been  said  on  this  platform ;  but,  if  he  turned  his  eye  upward, 
and  saw  the  change  that  has  come  over  the  American  world, 
to  say  nothing  of  Christendom,  during  the  last  hundred 
years,  and  contrasted  the  spirit  of  antipathy  which  existed 
between  sect  and  sect,  between  theologian  and  theologian, 
and  the  spirit  which  exists  between  them  now,  what  would 
be  his  thought.^  Even  so  sympathetic  a  man  as  my  fatlicr 
never  saw  an  Arminian  come  into  his  church  in  that  early 
day,  that  he  did  not  feel  bound  to  give  him  such  a  dose  of 
Calvinism  as  would  physic  him  for  a  year!  I  know  very 
well  how  stringent  were  the  habits,  the  methods,  the  pecu- 
liarities of  each  sect,  and  how  each  sect  defended  itself. 
They  were  like  so  many  nests  of  wasps  in  neighboring 
trees,  each  one  stinging  for  his  own  nest,  and  each  one 
fighting  against  the  nest  of  every  other. 

So  the  fiery  sects,  if  they  were  not  dead  and  buried  iu 
worldliness,  or  when  they  revived  and  came  to  life,  were 
animated  by  a  spirit  of  antipathy  and  suspicion  and  jeal- 
ousy. Of  course  the  spirit  of  envy  and  jealousy  is  universal 
and  continuous;  but  in  that  early  day  there  was  the  spirit 
of  criticism  and  of  suspicion,  and  it  all  sprang  from  a  very 
obvious  source.  For  had  they  not  embraced  that  world-wide 
heresy,  that  God  had  committed  his  kingdoms  in  this  world 
to  the  consciences  of  his  official  disciples,  and  had  ordained 


240  ClIANNING    CENTENARY. 

their  consciences  to  govern  the  consciences  of  all  mankind? 
Has  it  not  been  the  banc  of  every  sect,  from  the  beginning 
to  this  day,  that  men  have  felt  that  they  were  the  special 
depositaries  of  divine  knowledge,  and  that  the  deposition 
gave  them  the  power  to  dictate  to  other  men  what  they 
should  think  and  what  they  should  believe,  and  to  hold  the 
rod  of  everlasting  damnation  over  their  head,  if  they  did  not 
think  and  believe  as  they  were  told?  All  men  held  substan- 
tially this  view  then,  and  some  men  hold  it  even  now.  So  it 
came  to  pass  that  each  sect  followed  its  own  notion  of  God, 
marking  out  exactly  the  line  of  the  wall,  throwing  up  exactly 
the  right  bulwarks,  and  defending  what  each  man  knew  to 
be  the  one  exclusive  truth  of  creation,  and  feeling  bound  to 
look  sharp  at  all  the  others,  to  contest  them,  and  to  con- 
demn them,  that  the  deposit  of  truth  which  each  one  had  in 
purity  might  have  a  fair  chance  in  this  world ! 

That  is  all  changed.  I  remember  when  you  could  not  get 
a  minister  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  and  of  the  Unitarian, 
and  of  the  Universalist,  and  of  the  Swedenborgian,  and  of 
the  Baptist,  and  of  the  Congregationalist,  on  to  a  common 
platform.  You  could  scarcely  do  it  on  the  Fourth  of  July, 
and  it  was  a  wonder  then  that  they  did  not  fight.  But, 
to-day,  on  how  many  different  subjects  are  they  glad  to 
come  together  and  consult !  And  how  marvellous  an  event 
is  it  of  the  time  in  which  I  live,  to  see  all  these  stanch 
churches,  by  their  stanchest  ministers  and  advocates,  stand 
together  through  one  long  day  with  nothing  on  their  tongue 
but  praises  of  that  heretic  Unitarian,  Dr.  William  Ellery 
Channing!  Time  and  the  world  do  move.  Changes  have 
been  wrought. 

And  more  than  that :  there  has  come  in,  from  influences 
which  it  has  pleased  God  to  give  forth  and  distribute  in  the 
heart  and  understanding  of  many  a  man,  but  by  none  more 
than  by  Channing,  a  change  by  which  it  is  understood  in 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  24I 

this  world  that,  if  God  is  to  have  all  the  glory,  then  he  must 
be  represented  to  be  a  God  that  is  altogether  glorious  ;  that, 
if  he  is  to  have  sovereign  and  absolute  control  of  men,  then 
he  is  to  have  sovereign  and  absolute  control  of  men  because 
all  the  faculties  of  the  human  soul  which  he  infixed  in  man- 
kind for  the  very  purpose  of  judging  what  is  right  and  what 
is  wrong,  what  is  just  and  what  is  unjust,  what  is  holy  and 
pure  and  what  is  unholy  and  impure,  are  satisfied  with  the 
representations  that  are  made  of  him ;  and  the  whole  Chris- 
tian world  to-day  is  feeling  after  such  a  representation  of 
God  as  mankind  will  not  let  die  out.  No  view  of.  God  will 
be  allowed  to  reign  which  does  not  conform  to  the  enlight- 
ened moral  sense  of  good  men.  While  there  are  men  who 
are  atheists  largely  because  the  God  on  which  they  have 
been  fed  is  not  God,  is  a  misrepresentation  of  the  true  God, 
in  churches  all  over  our  land, —  and,  with  perhaps  more  re- 
luctant step,  in  the  churches  of  other  lands, —  the  cry  of 
Christendom  is :  "  Give  to  us  a  God  that  shall  not  be  apolo- 
gized for !  Give  to  us  a  God  that  we  do  not  need  to  defend ! 
Give  to  us  a  God  that,  when  the  child,  and  the  mother  of 
the  child,  and  the  just  man,  and  the  loving  soul,  look  up, 
they  shall  say,  '  Whom  have  I  in  heaven  but  thee  ?  and 
there  is  none  that  I  desire  upon  earth  beside  thee.'" 

The  Calvinistic  theology  of  New  England  before  Chan- 
ning's  day  had  become  intolerable  to  the  best  Orthodox 
men,  and  Channing  was  but  one  of  many  who  sought  its 
modification.  Judged  by  the  Scotch,  the  Genevese  stand- 
ard, Edwards,  Hopkins,  Bellamy,  West,  Spring,  Backus, 
Strong,  Dwight,  and  a  host  of  others,  were  smoothing  its 
features,  and  softening  its  immedicable  harshness.  The 
revolt  against  this  system  of  organized  fatalism  and  infinite 
despotism  is  not  yet  ended.  In  the  lecture-room  of  the 
schools,  where  intellect  has  supreme  sway  and  the  heart  is 
excluded,  it   still   lives,  but  in  the  pulpit  it  has  perished 


242  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

The  educated  moral  sense  of  the  laymen  has  slain  it.  The 
free  air  of  human  life,  the  play  of  Christian  sympathies 
upon  it,  have  made  it  as  impossible  to  employ  it  as  it  would 
be  to  upliold  astrology,  or  alchemy,  or  the  inquisition. 

But,  while  we  thus  speak  of  Calvinism,  John  Calvin  was 
illustrious  as  a  radical.  He  broke  away  from  the  reigning 
spirit  of  his  times,  and  led  the  spirit  of  free  inquiry.  Were 
he  alive  in  our  day,  no  man  would  scourge  Calvinism  with 
such  resounding  blows  as  John  Calvin  !  Nor  was  his  theo- 
logical system  without  great  benefit,  in  an  age  when  the 
king  and  the  priest  had  more  power  upon  the  senses  and 
the  imagination  than  God.  Men  believed  in  nothing  that 
they  could  not  see  and  handle.  The  Church  was  busy  in 
bringing  all  high  and  ineffable  truth  into  a  sensuous  con- 
dition. 

Over  against  this  magnificent  Rome,  with  its  cathedrals, 
altars,  robed  priests,  processions,  gorgeous  ceremonies,  fill- 
ing the  eye,  and  bringing  down  the  spiritual  man  to  the 
bondage  of  the  senses,  Calvin  wrought  out  a  theology  of 
thought,  logical,  elaborate,  complete.  When  men  pointed 
to  the  visible  church,  its  flowing  rituals  and  its  impressive 
trappings,  and  asked  tauntingly,  "  Where  is  your  religion  ? 
There  is  ours,  visible  to  all  men,  sublime  and  beautiful," 
Calvin  pointed  to  his  system,  invisible  yet  powerful,  ad- 
dressed to  reason,  not  sense  ;  a  system  that  aroused  fear, 
that  developed  imagination,  that  moved  in  men's  thoughts 
as  laws  of  nature  move  upon  the  earth.  His  God  was  full- 
orbed  in  power,  and  his  light  and  glory  extinguished  the 
false  lights  of  the  throne  and  the  altar.  It  was  a  time 
when  nations  were  being  dashed  in  pieces  as  a  potter's 
vessel ;  and  Calvin's  God  was  the  very  divine  iconoclast, 
going  forth  to  overthrow  idols  and  polluted  temples,  and 
drive  headlong  all  usurpers  of  His  prerogatives.  His  attri- 
butes did  not  shock  the  rude  ideas  of  that  day.     It  only 


CELEBRATION    AT    BROOKLYN.  243 

concentred  in  God  the  barbaric  authority  to  which  men  had 
wearily  and  long  submitted  in  magistrates  and  masters. 
Better  one^  despot  than  a  thousand.  That  system,  which 
now  oppresses  the  conscience  and  shocks  the  moral  sense, 
in  its  day  emancipated  reason,  developed  the  moral  sense, 
and  inspired  men  with  ideas  that  led  to  liberty  in  the  State 
and  in  the  Church. 

But,  like  the  steel  armor  of  our  fathers,  admirable  in  its 
day,  it  can  be  no  longer  worn.  The  spirit  of  God  has  ad- 
vanced men  beyond  the  need  of  such  an  instrument.  It 
must  be  placed  in  the  hall,  or  gathered  in  military  museums, 
with  broadswords,  spears,  culverins,  and  the  whole  panoply 
of  antiquated  weapons. 

Our  age  has  witnessed,  and  is  still  rejoicing  in,  a  better 
idea  of  justice.  There  has  been  a  great  advance  in  our  day 
in  the  conception  of  justice,  as  an  emanation  of  sympathy 
and  love,  and  not  a  deification  of  combativeness  and  destruc- 
tiveness.  Justice  has  been  made  vindictive  rather  than  vin- 
dicatory. The  principle  of  hate  has  ruled  in  civil  law,  in 
government,  in  theology,  and  in  the  churches.  We  have 
had  a  fighting,  and  not  a  loving  Christianity.  Repulsion 
has  been  stronger  than  attraction,  dislike  than  s}  mpathy. 
Upon  this  dreary  winter,  spring  is  advancing.  It  has  not 
yet  conquered.  Here  and  there  come  blustering  days,  to 
renew  the  rigor  and  to  destroy  this  new  life.  But  the  Sun 
of  Righteousness  is  now  high  in  the  heavens.  The  days 
are  longer;   the  light  advances,  and  the  warmth. 

All  things  are  tending  to  draw  men  to  each  other.  The 
things  in  which  men  agree  are  more  and  more  important 
than  those  in  which  they  differ.  Love  is  growing,  hate  is 
weakening. 

More  than  that,  I  think  in  the  past  one  hundred  years  — 
and  this,  the  birthday  of  Channing,  marks  the  beginning 
of  it  —  there  has  not  only  been  a  change  in  the  spirit  of 


244  ClIANNING    CENTENARY. 

sects,  in  the  notions  of  government  and  in  theology,  but 
there  has  also  been  a  wonderful  progress  in  true  religion. 
If  you  measure  religion  by  the  exact  forms  of- any  of  the 
highly  organized  churches, — our  mother,  Rome,  and  her 
eldest  daughter,  the  Episcopal  Church  ;  if  you  measure  it 
by  dogma  and  formality  and  ordinance,  in  the  different 
aspects  in  which  the  denominations  present  it ;  if  you 
measure  its  condition  by  the  Westminster  Catechism,  or 
by  the  Confession  of  Faith,  or  by  any  of  the  mediccval 
Confessions,  or  by  the  hitherto  standing  claims  of  any  of 
the  organized  religious  bodies, —  I  think  it  must  be  admitted 
that  there  is  a  decadence  of  religion.  But  how.?  When 
the  morning  star  begins  to  shine,  the  nimble  lamplighters 
of  our  cities  go  around  extinguishing  one  gaslight  after 
another.  They  were  substitutes  for  daylight ;  but,  when 
the  sun  is  coming  up,  there  is  no  longer  use  for  gaslight. 
And  shall  any  man  say,  "They  are  putting  out  the  light  of 
the  world"  .''  They  are  putting  out  the  artificial  lights  that 
help  up  through  the  night,  but  are  they  destroying  daylight  .'* 
If  religion  means  veneration,  there  is  not  so  much  as 
there  was.  Our  own  institutions  do  not  tend  to  breed  ven- 
eration. Our  children  know  as  much  as  we  do  at  fifteen 
years  of  age,  and  govern  us  at  twenty !  Our  magistrates 
have  but  little  dignity.  We  put  them  up  merely  that  we 
may  pelt  them.  To  nominate  a  man  for  office  in  our  land 
is  to  stigmatize  him  ;  and  to  elect  him  is  to  damn  him ! 
There  is  nothing  old  in  America  but  trees  ;  and  people  do 
not  care  for  them.  For  it  is  with  us  as  of  old,  when  a  man 
was  accounted  great  as  he  lifted  up  an  axe  against  the 
trees ;  and  almost  nothing  in  the  body  politic  is  sacred  in 
our  scrambling,  active  land,  where  men  are  building  every 
one  for  himself.  There  is  little  veneration  here ;  and,  if 
that  is  religion,  Heaven  help  us  !  We  have  tried  to  breed 
it.     We  build  big  churches  with  small  windows.     We  put 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  245 

out  what  little  light  can  get  through,  with  paint.  We  have 
imitations  of  grotesque  things  that  have  come  down  five 
hundred  or  one  thousand  years,  and  we  try  to  dress  as  they 
used  to  dress  before  they  knew  how  to  dress  !  In  every 
way  possible,  we  are  trying  to  coax  the  old  mediaeval  spirit 
of  veneration.  We  cannot  do  it :  it  is  not  bred  in  our  day. 
It  will  not  live  in  our  land.  The  common  school  is  against 
it  ;  the  elective  franchise  is  against  it  ;  the  whole  of  our  so- 
ciety is  against  it.  So  dangerous  are  the  lapses  of  men 
now  in  theology  that  we  are  all  of  us  trying  to  stop  that ; 
and  we  are  refurbishing  the  old  armor,  and  the  word  is 
going  out :  "  We  must  reprint  the  old  doctrines,  and  we 
must  introduce  a  shrewder  economy  in  our  seminaries,  and 
we  must  screw  up  the  system.  It  is  getting  loose  and 
shackly."  The  engineers  are  screwing  it  up  here  and 
there,  and  by  every  means  striving  to  make  it  work  as  it 
used  to  work.  There  is  such  a  widespread  doctrinal  defec- 
tion—  with  one  or  two  exceptions  —  that,  if  you  are  to 
measure  the  progress  of  religion  by  the  exact  agreement  of 
men  to  confession  and  catechism,  woe  be  to  religion ! 

Religion  is  of  the  heart.  It  is  a  living  force.  Books  do 
not  contain  it,  but  only  describe  it.  Creeds  and  Catechisms 
may  be  honored  while  religion  is  perishing;  and  religion 
may  be  increasing  in  scope  and  sweetness  while  creeds  are 
waning.  It  is  born  in  every  generation,  and  in  every  heart 
that  is  a  child  of  God  ;  and  one  cannot  find  whether  men 
have  religion  or  not  by  bringing  them  to  the  catechism, 
or  by  asking  them  how  they  got  it.  We  have  learned  one 
thing,  and  that  is  that  mankind  are  greater  than  all  the  gov- 
ernments of  mankind.  Wc  have  learned  that  man  is  more 
than  the  church,  and  that  the  church  was  made  for  man,  and 
not  man  for  the  church.  We  have  learned  that,  if  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  religion,  it  is  not  to  be  found  in  any  machin- 
ery. Wc  have  learned  that  religion  is  loving  God  and  loving 
our  fcUow-men. 


246  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Now,  then,  tested  by  that,  is  there  more  or  less  religion  in 
the  age  in  which  we  live  than  there  was  in  the  days  that  are 
gone  by  ?  I  say,  more.  I  call  the  whole  civilized  world  to 
witness  that,  although  there  is  much  of  the  lion,  of  the  bear, 
of  the  eagle,  and  of  the  vulture  yet  in  mankind,  and  though 
these  foul  beasts  or  birds  float  on  our  national  banners  and 
represent  much  of  the  under  economy  of  animalism  among 
men,  yet,  to  an  extent  that  was  never  known  before  in  the 
world,  there  is  the  spirit  of  sympathy  of  man  with  man 
disclosed.  Never  before  has  God  been  worshipped  by  the 
serving  of  his  children  as  he  is  to-day.  Never  before  was 
there  such  an  adhesion  as  there  is  to-day  to  the  words  of 
Christ,  "  Inasmuch  as  ye  do  it  unto  one  of  the  least  of  these, 
ye  do  it  untp  me."  We  worship  a  Christ  that  stands  by  the 
poor,  by  the  slave,  by  the  prisoner,  and  by  the  emigrant  who 
lands,  weary  and  discouraged,  on  our  shores.  We  worship  a 
Christ  that  identifies  himself  with  the  low  and  the  needy 
and  the  suffering.  We  worship  a  Christ  that  is  in  the  hos- 
pital among  the  sick.  If  worshipping  God  is  worshipping 
Christ,  I  am  Orthodox.  I  wish  others  were.  I  aver  that 
Christ  was  never  worshipped  so  much  as  he  is  to-day  by  the 
love,  by  the  sympathy,  and  by  the  self-sacrificing  helpful- 
ness which  we  bestow  upon  all  classes  and  conditions  of 
men.  Never  before  did  the  human  race  see  a  whole  age 
and  an  organized  nation  putting  their  hands  under  the  very 
bottom  of  society,  and  attempting  to  lift,  not  the  crowned 
heads,  not  the  middle  classes,  not  the  burghers  and  rich 
men,  but  mankind  from  the  very  lowest,  taking  the  whole 
house  up  from  its  foundation.  And  while  I  see  all  reform- 
atory societies  attempting  to  reclaim  men  from  intemper- 
ance, to  cleanse  our  prisons,  to  purge  out  vice,  to  restrain 
all  wrong ;  while  I  see  the  tendency  everywhere  to  send, 
by  showers  of  gold,  the  gospel  to  benighted  nations,  and  to 
promote  the   mission   cause   at  home,  and  to  educate   the 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  24/ 

slave  and  every  living  creature, —  shall  a  man  stand  by  and 
tell  me  that  religion  is  going  down?  A  religion  that  lets 
these  alone  is  no  religion  ;  and  a  religion  by  which  any 
man  or  community  takes  care  of  these,  and  in  the  love  of 
God  sympathizes  with  man,  and  cares  for  him, —  that  is  the 
true  religion. 

When  the  potato  was  first  sent  to  Ireland,  they  planted  it, 
and  did  not  know  where  to  look  for  the  fruit.  And  when 
it  blossomed  and  bore  its  little  seed-pods,  they  boiled  these 
pods,  and  ate  them,  and  did  not  like  potatoes !  If  they  had 
gone  to  the  root  of  the  matter,  they  would  have  liked  them. 
And  there  are  very  many  men  who  taste  religion  as  it  is 
shown  in  the  pod,  if  I  may  so  say ;  and  they  do  not  like  this 
church,  that  doctrine,  this  ordinance,  and  that  economy. 
What  if  you  do  not .-'  These  are  not  crops  :  they  are  merely 
the  tools  by  which  we  try  to  raise  crops.  They  are  the 
machinery  by  which  we  work,  and  not  the  thing  for  which 
we  are  working.  I  never  ate  millstones ;  but  I  have  eaten 
that  which  millstones  have  produced.  And  the  things  that 
grind  out  human  love  and  kindness, —  all  may  be  defective ; 
but  the  flour  is  the  thing.  And  I  say  that  never  before  was 
there  so  much  holy  flour  ground  as  there  is  to-day. 

There  is  one  more  thing  that  I  think  is  true,  and  of  which 
this  celebration  is  significant ;  namely,  that  there  is  no  state- 
ment of  religion  like  religion  itself.  You  cannot  put  into 
words  the  essential  verities  of  religion.  When  you  have 
used  all  the  language  that  the  vocabulary  can  give  you,  and 
tacked  word  to  word,  you  cannot  have  made  a  belt  that  will 
go  around  the  infinity  and  eternity  of  God.  When  by  every 
figure  that  is  known  to  fallible  men,  by  all  the  sweetness  of 
a  mother's  love,  by  all  the  purity  of  a  child's  love,  by  all  the 
fervor  of  noble  souls  just  mated,  you  have  tried  to  represent 
God ;  when  you  have  gathered  up  all  things  that  are  re- 
splendent, and  made  them  patterns  of  divine  love, —  you  have 


24S  CHANXING    CKNTKNARV. 

(lone,  as  it  were,  nothing.  The  love  of  God  that  fills  eter- 
nity, and  that  is  marching  down  through  eternities,  bearing 
benison  and  benediction  to  countless  spheres  of  existence, 
doubtless,  besides  our  own, —  when  you  attempt  to  put  it 
into  language  and  represent  it  by  figures  gathered  by  the 
limited  experiences  of  men,  it  is  as  if  you  undertook  to  find 
timber  for  your  navy  in  moss,  and  as  if  you  undertook  to 
decorate  your  cathedrals  with  the  inconspicuous  flowers  and 
plants  that  grow  too  small  but  for  the  microscope.  God  is 
too  big  for  language,  too  big  for  representation  by  human 
experience.  The  thing  that  most  nearly  represents  God  is 
a  man  that  is  living  like  God.  And  no  man  can  draw  that 
portrait  or  put  it  into  language.  We  can  see  it,  and  we  can 
rejoice  in  it;  but,  after  all,  the  man  that  is  like  God  is  the 
best  catechism  and  the  best  confession  of  faith.  And  we 
have  learned  one  thing, —  that,  when  we  see  such  a  man,  he 
is  God's,  and  he  is  ours.  "All  things  are  yours,"  says  Paul. 
On  that  ground,  I  am  as  good  a  Catholic  as  there  is  in  this 
world,  except  the  pope  and  the  cardinals  and  the  bishops, 
and  their  doctrines.  And  from  my  ownership  of  every  saintly 
woman  and  every  saintly  man  no  one  can  hinder  me.  They 
are  mine,  because  they  are  God's ;  and  I  revere  them  and  love 
them.  There  is  a  vast  amount  of  true  theology  in  the  good 
living  of  the  Catholic  Church.  There  are  men  that  rebuke 
our  lukewarmness  and  our  lives  by  the  nobility  of  theirs, — 
multitudes  of  them ;  and  they  are  all  right.  Whatever  the 
church  may  be  that  makes  them,  theirs  is  the  true  theology. 
I  go  from  that  into  the  Episcopal  Church.  It  is  enough  for 
me  that  she  gave  me  my  mother.  Than  that  there  can  be 
no  farther  argument.  The  church  that  yields  such  blessings 
is  not  a  church  that  I  can  contest,  whatever  her  machinery 
may  be.  I  ask :  "  What  are  the  products  ?  Where  are  the 
saints,  men  and  women  .''"  If  they  are  Christ-like,  they  are 
all  right.     I  go  into  the  Unitarian  Church.     I  want  no  better 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  249 

Christians  than  I  find  there.  They  are  orthodox,  sound, 
by  every  Christian  man  and  every  Christian  woman  among 
them  that  makes  piety  beautiful  in  the  eyes  of  mankind. 
I  go  into  the  Swedenborgian  Church.  Brother  Ager  is  a 
good  enough  Christian  for  me.  He  is  soundly  orthodox, 
whatever  he  believes.  No  matter  about  that.  I  don't  care 
what  a  man  believes.  What  is  he .-'  That  is  my  question. 
I  say  that  what  a  man  is,  is  his  confession  of  faith.  A 
man's  life  is  more  important  than  any  statement  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  that  life,  or  of  the  machinery  by  which  that  life 
was  brought  into  existence. 

It  is  true  that  some  schools  are  better  than  other  schools, 
that  some  methods  of  teaching  are  very  likely  to  be  better 
than  some  others,  that  some  statements  of  doctrine  are 
better  than  some  other  statements  of  doctrine  in  their  apti- 
tude to  carry  men  on  and  upward.  I  will  not  discriminate 
as  to  which  I  think  is  the  better,  though  I  can  well  under- 
stand that  there  is  a  difference  between  one  and  another ; 
but  this  I  say,  that  when  any  man  has  been  made  a  Chris- 
tian, luminous  of  heaven,  he  does  not  belong  to  the  church 
that  bred  him  :  he  belongs  to  that  universal  church  which 
has  no  exposition  but  in  the  .sympathies  of  the  universe ; 
and  he  belongs  to  you  and  to  me.  And,  sir,  don't. take  on 
airs,  as  if  Channing  was  your  man.  He  is  my  man  as  much 
as  he  is  yours.  I  have  seen  considerable  of  that  spirit  here 
to-night, —  and  I  feel  bound  as  a  Christian  to  fight  it, —  as  if 
you  had  a  man  that  you  would  let  us  come  and  look  at,  as 
if  we  might  be  permitted  to  come  on  this  platform  and  wor- 
ship your  hero.  I  thank  God  that  you  have  some  such  men 
to  worship  and  to  present  to  us.  It  is  a  sign  that  there  is 
a  sort  of  grace  with  you.  Your  doctrines  may  be  very  im- 
perfect;  but,  after  all,  there  is  a  grace  of  God  that  goes  with 
imperfection.  All  sorts  of  instruments  have  been  employed 
in  this  world.    Oftentimes,  too,  the  instrument  has  been  more 


250  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

than  the  prophet,  as  when  lialaam  went  forth  on  his  famous 
ride  of  old.  And,  since  all  sorts  of  instruments  are  emjjloyed 
by  the  good  God,  no  matter  what  the  instrument  is,  it  is  the 
man  that  is  created. 

Here  was  a  man,  in  a  dark  day,  in  a  day  of  controversy, 
in  a  day  in  which  men  stood  very  differently  from  the  way 
in  which  they  stand  now  ;  and  I  look  upon  the  godly  man 
and  see  a  lambent  flame  of  holiness.  I  see  that  he  was 
a  light  kindled  in  a  dark  place  ;  and  the  sweetness  of  his 
humility  strikes  me.  He  blushes  in  heaven  to  hear  what  is 
said  of  him  on  earth,  if  he  attends  to  it, —  though  I  think 
likely  he  does  not.  He  was  a  good  man.  If  he  had  been  in 
the  Roman  Church,  he  w^oukl  have  been  a  saint  ;  and  he  is 
not  less  a  saint,  because  he  was  in  the  Unitarian  Church. 
We  have  learned  that  man  is  a  better  exposition  of  Chris- 
tianity than  doctrines,  or  any  of  the  various  instruments  of 
the  church.  We  are  learning  to  receive  whom  God  receives  ; 
and  whenever  a  man  shows  that  he  is  acceptable  to  the 
Master,  is  wearing  his  spirit,  and  is  blessed  by  his  contin- 
ual attendance,  that  man  is  sacred  to  us,  no  matter  to  what 
denomination  he  may  belong.  A  man  is  more  than  doctrine, 
— and  mankind  are  more  than  church  and  more  than  govern- 
ment. Next  to  God,  the  only  valuable  thing  in  this  universe 
is  living  men  ;  and  all  nature  is  prepared  to  take  care  of 
them.  God  is  the  Fountain  and  Cause  of  all  things  ;  and 
all  nature  and  all  time  and  all  providence  and  all  grace  are 
so  many  ministering  servants  to  develop  manhood  in  men. 
And  the  only  difference  there  can  possibly  be  in  our  view  of 
God  is  this  :  those  views  of  God  that  tend  to  beat  men  down, 
and  to  beat  down  their  moral  sense,  you  may  be  sure  are 
false  views ;  while  the  views  of  God  that  tend  to  lift  men 
up,  to  inspire  them  with  a  holy  horror  of  sin,  to  lead  them 
to  aspire  to  holiness,  and  to  give  them  a  willingness  to  do 
kindness  at  their  own  expense,  to  live  for  mankind,  and  if 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  25 1 

need  be  to  shed  their  blood, —  such  views  are  orthodox,  how- 
ever defective  the  system  may  be  from  which  they  spring. 

When  we  look  back,  then,  one  hundred  years,  what  do  we 
see  ?  The  greatest  change,  I  think,  that  has  been  produced 
in  any  hundred  since  the  advent  ;  and,  when  I  look  forward 
from  this  stand-point,  it  seems  to  me  that  we  stand  just 
about  in  the  month  of  April  in  the  history  of  the  world  as 
we  do  in  this  year.  We  have  had  our  dead  winter,  we  have 
had  our  blustering,  controversial  month  of  March,  and  now 
^we  have  our  month  of  April,  which  does  not  know  exactly 
whether  it  has  left  March  or  whether  it  is  entering  into 
May ;  but  it  is  on  the  way  toward  summer,  and  soon  there 
will  come  the  blossoms  of  May  already  anticipated ;  and 
after  that  will  come  June,  the  opal  of  the  year ;  and  then 
the  summer  ;  and  then  the  harvest.  We  are  on  the  full 
march ;  and,  therefore,  instead  of  looking  back  to  the  leeks 
and  onions  of  orthodoxy  in  Egypt,  the  spirit  of  God,  the 
spirit  of  philosophy,  the  spirit  of  wisdom,  the  spirit  of  true 
religion,  is  to  forget  the  things  that  are  behind,  and  to  press 
forward  toward  the  mark  for  the  prize  of  our  high  calling  in 
Christ  Jesus. 

Mr.  Beecher  resumed  his  seat  amid  the  loud  and  long- 
continued  applause  of  the  audience,  which  had  still  remained 
unbroken,  though  it  was  now  after  eleven  o'clock. 

The  following  verses,  from  Bryant's  "  Thou  hast  put  all 
things  under  His  feet,"  were  then  sung  by  the  assembly  to 
the  tune  of  "Coronation,"  as  the  closing  hymn:  — 

O  North,  with  all  thy  vales  of  green  I 

O  South,  with  all  thy  palms ! 
From  peopled  towns  and  fields  between 

Uplift  the  voice  of  psalms. 
Raise,  ancient  East,  the  anthem  high, 

And  let  the  youthful  West  reply. 


252  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Lu  I  111  the  clouds  of  hciiven  appears 

God's  wcll-belov^d  Son ; 
He  brings  a  train  of  brighter  years ; 

His  kingdom  is  begun. 
He  comes,  a  guilty  world  to  bless 

With  mercy,  truth,  and  righteousness. 

O  Father  I  haste  the  promised  hour, 

When  at  His  feet  shall  lie 
All  rule,  authority,  and  power 

Beneath  the  ample  sky ; 
When  He  shall  reign  from  pole  to  pole, 

The  Lord  of  every  human  soul  I 

The  benediction  was  pronounced  by  the  Rev.  F.  A. 
Farley,  D.D.,  in  these  words:  — 

Now,  with  gratitude  in  our  hearts,  and  thanksgiving  and 
praise  to  God  for  this  occasion,  for  all  its  sweet  memories, 
and  for  all  the  blessed  words  it  has  caused  to  be  spoken,  may 
the  grace  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  the  love  of  God,  and 
the  communion  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  be  with  us,  and  remain 
with  us  always  !     Atnen. 

Cordial  letters,  expressive  of  interest  in  the  celebration 
and  of  regret  at  not  being  able  to  attend  its  meetings,  were 
received  from  the  following  near  relatives  of  Dr.  Channing : 
Rev.  Geo.  G.  Channing,  his  only  surviving  brother,  now  in 
his  ninety-first  year;  Rev.  William  Henry  Channing,  his 
nephew  and  biographer;  Dr.  W.  F.  Channing;  Miss  Eliza- 
beth P.  Channing ;  Miss  Mary  Channing ;  also  from  Rev. 
Charles  T.  Brooks;  Miss  Mary  E.  Davey;  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel. 
Osgood;  George  Ripley;  Rev.  Dr.  H.  W.  Bellows;  Rev. 
Dr.  James  Martineau ;  Rev,  Dr.  Phillips  Brooks ;  Rev.  Dr. 
William  Newell  ;  Rev.  Dr.  John  Cordner ;  Rev.  Dr.  F,  H. 
Hedge;  Rev.  E.  Turland ;  Rev.  Dr.  C.  A.  Bartol ;  Rev. 
Robert  Spears  ;  Rev.  Dr.  Thomas  Hill ;  Bishop  Joseph 
Ferencz;  Prof.  David  Swing;  Rev.  Edwin  M.  Stone;  Rev. 


I 


CELEBRATION  AT  BROOKLYN.  253 

Dr.  George  H.  Emerson ;  Rev.  Dr.  VVm.  G.  Eliot ;  Dr. 
Franz  von  Holtzendorff ;  Prof.  C.  C.  Everett,  D.D.  ;  the 
Dutch  Protestant  Association,  Holland;  Rev.  C.  C.  Sewall ; 
Hon.  S.  E.  Sewall;  Rev.  Dr.  G.  W.  Hosraer;  Rev.  Dr.  John 
Cotton  Smith  ;  Rev.  Dr.  John  H.  Morison ;  Prince  Arthur 
Odescalchi  and  others,  Hungary;  Mr.  John  Fretwell  ; 
Charles  W.  Eliot,  LL.D.,  President  of  Harvard  University; 
ex-Governor  George  S.  Boutwell,  of  Massachusetts;  Henry 
P.  Kidder,  Esc|.,  President  of  the  American  Unitarian  Asso- 
ciation ;  John  H.  Rogers,  Esq., .  of  Boston ;  Col.  Thomas 
Wentworth  Higginson;  Prof.  J.  L.  Diman,  of  Brown  Uni- 
versity; Rev.  E.  A.  Washburn,  D.D.,  New  York;  Rev. 
W.  H.  Furness,  D.D.;  Rev.  R.  P.  Stebbins,  D.D. ;  Rev. 
James  Freeman  Clarke,  D.D.  ;  Rev.  L.  D.  Bevan,  D.D., 
of  New  York ;  Rev.  E.  E.  Hale,  D.D.  ;  Rev.  Messrs. 
J.  F.  W.  Ware,  R.  R.  Shippen,  Samuel  Longfellow,  S.  R. 
Calthrop,  Minot  J.  Savage,  Brooke  Herford,  James  De 
Normandie,  C.  A.  Staples,  C.  G.  Ames,  H.  H.  Barber, 
E.  H.  Hall,  etc. 

A  few  of  these  letters  were  read  at  the  meeting.  All  are 
printed  in  the  Appendix  of  the  Special  Report  of  the  Brook- 
lyn meeting. 


THE  CELEBRATION  AT  NEW  YORK  CITY. 


The  comprehensiveness  of  the  plan  of  the  celebration  in 
the  neighboring  city  of  Brooklyn,  and  the  fact  that  two  of 
the  three  Unitarian  ministers  of  New  York  had  accepted 
invitations  to  participate  in  the  celebration  at  Newport,  R.I., 
Channing's  birthplace,  made  any  special  observance  of  the 
centennial  day  in  New  York  impossible.  Sermons  appro- 
priate to  the  occasion  were  given  on  the  Sundays  preceding 
and  following  the  anniversary  day  in  the  three  Unitarian 
churches  of  the  city,  and  at  the  Jewish  Temple  Emanu-el, 
by  Rev.  Dr.  Gottheil ;  and  reference  to  Channing  and  his 
influence  was  made  in  many  other  pulpits  and  in  the  edi- 
torial columns  of  the  leading  newspapers  of  the  city.  At 
the  meeting  of  the  Historical  Society  of  New  York,  on 
Tuesday  evening,  April  6,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel  Osgood 
delivered  an  oration  on  Channing's  Life  and  Work,  which 
held  the  interest  of  the  assembly  for  an  hour  and  a  half, 
and  on  Judge  Peabody's  motion  was  ordered  to  be  printed 
and  placed  in  the  society's  archives.  This  address  will  have 
for  Dr.  Osgood's  friends  a  double  interest,  from  the  fact  that 
it  was  his  last  public  utterance,  delivered  only  a  week  before 
his  death,  on  the  14th  of  April. 

Dr.  Bellows'  discourse  was  the  one  prepared  for  delivery 


CELEBRATION    AT    NEW    YORK.  255 

at  Newport.  Mr.  Collyer's  sermon  was  a  fresh  and  an  in- 
teresting biographical  sketch,  which  was  pubhshed  in  full  in 
the  Oiristian  Register  of  April   17. 

The  following  passages  from  the  discourse  of  the  Rev,  Dr. 
Gustav  Gottheil,  the  Rabbi  of  the  Jewish  Temple  Emanu-el, 
will,  we  believe,  be  read  with  peculiar  interest,  as  probably 
the  most  hearty  and  elaborate  Jewish  tribute  ever  paid  to 
Channing. 

The  text  was  from  Daniel  xii.,  3  :  "  And  they  that  be 
wise  shall  shine  as  the  brightness  of  the  firmament ;  and 
they  that  turn  many  to  righteousness,  as  the  stars  forever 
and  ever."  After  an  introductory  biographical  passage,  the 
preacher  said :  — 

Time  was  when  a  Christian  saint's  day  strupk  terror  to 
the  heart  of  the  Jew ;  for  it  stirred  up  the  embers  of  a 
smouldering  wrath,  and  aroused  a  sleeping  hatred,  if  ever 
it  did  sleep,  to  new  fury. 

It  laid  the  bleeding,  mangled  bodies  of  its  victims  as  a 
sweet  savor  on  the  altar  of  the  saint.  Time  is  now  —  how 
can  we  be  sufficiently  thankful  for  it.?  —  when  the  gates  of 
the  church  are  thrown  wide  open,  and  all  are  invited  to 
gather  around  and  lay  their  flowers  on  the  honored  tomb  ; 
and,  when  the  Israelite  is  found  among  them,  his  tribute  is 
gladly  accepted.  I  was  invited  to  take  part  in  the  celebration 
of  the  day  in  our  sister  city,  Brooklyn.  I  responded  gladly, 
and  said  what  my  heart  prompted  me  to  say.  But  I  asked 
myself.  Have  we  Israelites  as  a  body  no  interest  in  the 
event  beyond  that  of  sympathetic  spectators }  Do  we  owe 
nothing  to  the  great  man .?  And,  if  we  do,  why  should  we 
remain  silent  }  One  of  the  Rabbinical  sayings  is  to  this 
effect:  "This  life  is  to  the  other  what  the  vestibule  is  to 
the  palace."  And  they  admonish  us  so  to  prepare  ourselves 
in  the  outer  court  that  we  may  worthily  appear  before  the 


256  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

King  of  kings  in  the  inner  court.  What  better  portion 
can  wc  think  of  than  to  remember  lovingly  and  thankfully 
outside  the  palace  those  whom  we  shall  meet  inside  ?  Death 
will  have  swallowed  up  all  our  little  creeds,  will  have  blotted 
out  all  the  dividing  lines,  and  we  shall  then  meet  together. 
What  a  feeling  that  will  be,  knowing  that  there  is  nothing 
in  the  heart,  nothing  antagonistic, —  no  book,  no  church,  no 
creed, —  that  any  one  of  us  will  have  to  save  or  to  defend, 
—  because  God  will  be  in  all,  and  all  will  be  found  in  God ! 
Suppose  we  try  to  bring  that  heaven  just  a  little  nearer  to 
our  troubled  earth,  and  lay  our  ear  to  a  great  heart,  though 
it  may  have  cherished  a  name  of  its  own,  just  to  feel  how 
closely  its  heart-throbs  resemble  those  of  our  own  hearts. 

Here  in  our  own  house  of  prayer,  and  in  the  midst  of 
worship  of  Almighty  God,  let  us  honor  the  memory  of 
C  banning. 

First  and  foremost,  because  he  was  a  righteous  man. 
Righteous  did  I  say .''  Why  that  is  but  poor  praise ;  for  so 
may  be  the  man  of  flinty  heart,  from  which  not  a  spark  of 
love  is  emitted.  But  Channing's  heart  was  suffused  with 
love  and  compassion.  His  yearning  for  well-doing  was  so 
strong  that  it  nerved  his  feeble  body  to  uninterrupted  action 
for  his  kind.  The  law  of  love  was  in  his  heart  and  on  his 
lips.  He  was  a  great  controversialist.  The  largest  portion 
of  his  sermons  and  writings  is  devoted  to  exposure  of 
the  fallacies  in  religion,  in  politics,  and  in  social  life.  He 
applied  the  scalpel  with  unsparing  hand,  cutting  down  as 
deep  as  he  thought  necessary  in  order  to  heal  the  sore. 
And  yet  I  know  of  no  other  polemical  writer  so  free  from 
all  bitterness,  from  all  passionate  vindictiveness,  from  all  vile 
insinuations  as  he.  His  classic  repose  and  absolute  self- 
control  never  forsook  him,  even  in  the  very  heat  of  the 
battle.  And,  when  his  funeral  cortege  moved  to  his  grave, 
the  bells  of  the  Catholic  churches  tolled  their  dirges,  albeit 


CELEBRATION    AT    NEW    YORK.  257 

that  Channing  was  a  determined  adversary  of  the  Church 
of  Rome.  So  overpowering  indeed  was  the  influence  of  his 
goodness,  and  so  irresistible  the  beauty  of  his  benevolent 
life! 

Next  to  this,  we  cherish  his  memory  as  that  of  a  powerful 
and  intrepid  advocate  of  the  emancipation  of  the  slave, 
who  takes  his  place  in  American  history  by  the  side  of 
such  men  as  William  Lloyd  Garrison.  We  honor  him  as 
a  stanch  upholder  of  the  divine  rights  of  man,  as  the  elo- 
quent defender  of  liberty,  as  a  propounder  of  a  national 
system  of  free  education,  from  the  primary  school  up  to 
the  university,  and  as  one  of  the  founders  of  a  national 
literature. 

Now,  as  lovers  of  this  country,  as  faithful  children  of  this 
nation,  you  cannot  but  share  in  the  general  joy  that  a  man 
was  born  who  contributed  so  much  to  elevate  America  to 
the  position  which  she  occupies  to-day  ;  whose  diligent 
hands  'sowed  the  seed  in  the  furrows  of  time,  which  now 
cover  the  fields  with  such  abundant  harvests.  He  has  been 
called  the  representative  man  of  what  is  best  and  most  pe- 
culiar in  the  character  and  tendency  of  the  American. 

If  some  theory  or  some  name  must  needs  be  put  into  our 
Constitution,  I  for  one  shall  vote  for  Channing's  theory  of 
a  republic ;  when  he  declares  in  his  paper  for  the  annexa- 
tion of  Texas  that  "  the  ornaments  and  safeguards  of  a 
republic  are  the  higher  virtues,  the  moral  independence,  the 
simplicity  of  manners,  the  stern  uprightness,  and  the  re- 
spect of  man  for  man." 

It  has  been  said  that  Channing's  influence  is  waning.  So 
much  the  worse  for  Americans.  The  fault  does  not  lie  with 
them,  but  with  us,  in  allowing  the  voice  of  that  prophet  of 
righteousness  to  be  drowned  by  the  noises  of  selfish  pas- 
sions and  mean  political  ends.  Wc  can  see  that  Channing's 
life,  even  though  it  bore  no  relation  at  all  to  our  religion,  is 


25S  CIIAN'NING    CENTENARY. 

worthy  of  our  recognition.  If  not,  we  should  then  leave  un- 
noticed the  noblest  and  largest  part  of  his  work,  the  peculiar 
work  to  which  he  had  consecrated  himself, —  "  to  educate 
men  to  just  views  of  God  and  man." 

In  Channing's  days,  Calvinism  ruled  supreme.  The  Ori- 
entals dream  of  a  bridge,  of  the  thickness  of  a  hair  only, 
over  which  the  soul  will  have  to  pass  on  its  way  to  paradise. 
The  bridge  that  leads  to  the  Calvinistic  heaven  is  of  no 
greater  strength.  One  single  doubt  or  misgiving,  and  the 
bridge  snaps,  and  down  the  soul  must  go  to  eternal  fire. 
You  meet  many  people  nowadays  who  hold  exactly  the 
same  doctrine,  but  you  do  not  recognize  them,  because 
these  things  have  now  receded  to  that  domain  to  which 
they  belong, —  to  the  domain  of  j^rivate  opinion.  I  have 
sometimes  strayed  into  a  church, —  and  I  have  been  to  al- 
most every  variety  of  worship, —  when  I  have  heard  from 
the  pulpit  theories  that  made  my  blood  run  cold.  And  I 
began  to  think,  What  a  stern,  unyielding,  unloving  character 
must  the  man  have,  who  can  adopt  and  preach  such  terrible 
doctrines  of  wrath  and  fury  and  brimstone!  But  when,  by 
chance,  I  have  seen  the  man  afterwards,  come  down  from 
the  cloudland  of  his  pulpit  to  our  solid  earth,  and  have 
shaken  his  hand,  I  find  that  he  is  a  capital  fellow,  whom 
the  worst  of  theology  could  not  spoil. 

It  was  very  different  in  the  days  in  which  Channing  lived, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  present  century.  That  Christian 
theory  pressed  like  a  weight  upon  American  society,  and 
divided  it.  The  controversy  raged  not  only  in  the  pulpit, 
but  in  every-day  life.  You  would  scarcely  credit  the  fact 
that  Channing  saw,  with  his  own  eyes,  a  man  arraigned  in 
a  court  and  sentenced  to  three  months'  imprisonment  for  ut- 
tering what  was  then  called  "blasphemy."  If  the  same 
law  were  still  carried  out,  one-half  of  New  York  would  have 
to  go  to  prison.      He  raised  his  voice  against   such  a  the- 


CELEBRATION    AT    NEW    YORK.  259 

ology.  His  mind  revolted  against  a  view  of  the  Deity  that 
invested  the  Eternal  Father  with  a  character  among  men 
that  would  cause  the  human  father  to  be  pointed  at  and 
abhorred  as  a  monster.  He  crowned  God  with  the  glory  of 
Fatherhood,  and  seated  him  on  a  throne  of  eternal  justice, 
—  a  throne  unshared  by  any  other  being. 

He  held,  as  we  hold,  that  man  is  not  a  criminal  chained 
to  this  earth  as  his  prison,  but  that  he  is  crowned  with  glory 
and  honor ;  that,  if  he  did  fall  in  paradise,  he  fell,  as  has 
been  truly  said,  upwards  ;  that  he  took  the  first  step  toward 
a  higher  moral  development ;  that  every  soul  is  God's  own 
property,  for  which  he,  as  the  Creator,  is  responsible  to  him- 
self, and  being  a  faithful  God  he  will  see  to  it  that  his  prom- 
ises be  fulfilled.  Channing  tried  to  close  the  gates  of  hell, 
because  he  could  never  be  happy  in  his  paradise  so  long  as 
these  gates  yawned  to  receive  his  fellow-sinners.  He  de- 
throned Satan,  because  he  considered  him  a  usurper  of  the 
power  which  belongs  to  God  alone.  So  you  see  Channing 
preached  the  brotherhood  and  equality  of  men.  And,  if  you 
look  at  it  a  little  carefully,  you  will  find  that  Judaism  was 
preached  in  Boston  long  before  a  single  Jew  had  settled 
there,  at  a  time  when  there  was  no  synagogue  there  out- 
side of  Federal  Street  Church,  where  Channing  preached  to 
throngs  of  devout  hearers.  Is  it  not,  then,  a  cause  of  joy 
to  us  that  that  truth  has  burst  through  all  the  thin  layers 
of  the  Calvinistic  rock,  and  has  welled  up  in  so  pure  a  state, 
and  reflects  such  a  beautiful  light  as  that  man  was  able  to 
shed  upon  it .?  Not  that  he  meant  to  preach  anything  but 
Christianity.  Channing  was  a  believing  Christian ;  and, 
probably,  if  he  were  here  and  heard  me  so  construe  his 
theory,  he  would  turn  around  and  protest.  Many  preach 
Moses  in  their  churches,  though  they  do  not  acknowledge 
it.  Jesus  was  to  Channing,  if  not  God,  yet  the  next  of  kin, 
who  was  sent  into  this  world  in  a  miraculous  way,  to  per- 


260  CMAXMNG    CENTENARY. 

form  a  work  of  such  stupendous  and  unique  character  that 
it  can  be  accounted  for  on  no  other  theory  than  that  of  the 
suspension  of  all  natural  causes.  But  his  disciples  have 
loni;  since  blotted  out  the  circle  of  his  theology,  and  clung 
only  to  his  principles  and  his  spirit ;  and  that  spirit  is 
immortal. 

Channing  spoke  for  his  time.  His  favorite  theory  of  a 
church  purified  by  the  holy  spirit  which  he  thought  to 
breathe  into  it,  as  the  mother  of  a  redeemed  world,  will 
never  be  fulfilled.  But  there  is  a  true  prophecy  in  words 
like  these:  "Charity,"  he  says,  "and  forbearance  delight 
the  virtuous  of  the  different  sects :  recrimination  and  cen- 
sure we  condemn."  Those  are  virtues  which,  however 
poorly  practised  by  us,  we  heartily  recommend.  We  would 
rather  join  ourselves  to  the  church  in  which  they  abound 
than  to  any  other  communion,  however  well  confirmed  their 
belief  in  their  own  orthodoxy.  That  spirit  is  destined  to 
burst  all  the  husks  of  dogmas  based  on  particular  histories, 
and  to  rear  the  temple  of  the  living  God  on  the  eternal  rock 
of  human  consciousness  and  all  the  common  experiences  and 
needs  of  our  common  humanity.  The  sects  of  which  Chan- 
ning speaks  are  Christian  sects.  That  follows  from  the 
preceding  sentence.  The  Jews  are  left  out  in  the  cold 
altogether.  His  references  to  the  Jews  are  few,  and  Ju- 
daism as  a  surviving  religion  seems  to  have  been  entirely 
outside  of  his  horizon.  Of  the  deep  pathos  of  Jewish  his- 
tory, of  their  martyrdom  for  the  same  truths  which  he  de- 
fended, and  which  were  so  dear  to  him,  he  seems  to  have 
known  nothing.  This  is  not  to  be  wondered  at,  since  there 
existed  in  his  day  but  very  little  of  Judaism  in  America, 
and  that  little  in  a  petrified  state,  the  mediaeval  orthodoxy, 
symbolized  by  what  we  see  in 'his  own  birthplace  in  New- 
port, a  burial-place  and  an  empty  synagogue.  But,  had  he 
witnessed  the  rejuvenescence  in  our  day,  he  would  have  felt 


CELEBRATION    AT    NEW    YORK.  26 1 

the  affinity  between  his  spirit  and  that  in  which  we  endeavor 
to  reconstruct  our  religion  just  as  keenly  as  do  his  followers 
nowadays.  He  might  have  stood  in  this  very  pulpit.  He 
might  have  reiterated  in  our  own  hearing  his  adoring  homage 
to  the  one  God  and  Father  in  heaven,  which  would  grace 
any  synagogue.  He  could  have  repeated  his  pleadings  for 
the  brotherhood  of  all  men,  his  trumpet-calls  to  duty  and 
virtue,  his  tender  appeals  for  the  poor  and  the  suffering,  his 
elevating  and  ennobling  prophecies  of  a  glorious  future  in 
store  for  man,  both  here  and  hereafter.  Had  he  done  so, 
I  know  that  each  one  of  you  would  have  said  with  all  your 
heart  and  soul,  To  such  teachings,  Amen. 


THE  CHICAGO  CELEBRATION. 


Of  this  meeting,  "C.  P.  W.,"  the  regular  correspondent 
of  the  Christian  Register,  says  :  — 

The  call  for  the  Channing  celebration  at  Chicago  was  signed  by  many 
of  the  orthodox  clergymen  of  the  city,  and  the  committee  of  arrange- 
ments included  Rev.  Dr.  Felsenthal,  a  Jewish  rabbi ;  Dr.  Lorimer,  Bap- 
tist; Dr.  Thomas,  Methodist;  Prof.  Swing,  Independent;  and  Messrs. 
Herford,  Alger,  and  Galvin,  Unitarians. 

Long  before  the  hour  of  opening,  the  crowd  began  to  gather  at  the 
doors  of  Central  Music  Hall  on  the  evening  of  April  7,  and  by  eight 
o'clock  an  audience  of  nearly  two  thousand  had  assembled  in  celebra- 
tion of  the  Channing  centenary.  The  six  addresses  which  constituted 
the  principal  part  of  the  programme  were  happily  interspersed  with  fine 
music  and  the  reading  of  letters  from  a  few  distinguished  invites  who 
could  not  be  present.  Hon.  Isaac  N.  Arnold  served  as  reader.  A 
friendly  word  was  received  from  our  beloved  poet  Whittier,  and  mes- 
sages of  sympathy  and  regret  from  Dr.  Bellows,  George  W.  Curtis,  and 
Edward  E.  Hale. 

The  first  speaker  of  the  evening  was  Judge  Henry  Strong,  whose 
subject  was  "  Channing's  Influence  on  Public  Life."  The  wise,  impar- 
tial, and  statesmanlike  qualities  of  Channing's  mind  were  clearly  set 
forth ;  and  at  the  close  a  comparison  was  drawn  between  him  and  Mon- 
tesquieu, of  whom  Voltaire  said,  "When  the  human  race  had  lost  their 
charter,  Montesquieu  found  and  restored  it." 

Prof.  David  Swing  then  read  a  brief  essay,  replete  with  brilliant  meta- 
phor, delicate  and  playful   irony,  and  graceful  narrative.     It  fell  to  his 


CELEBRATION    AT    CHICAGO.  263 

share  to  treat  of  the  religious  inriuence  of  Channing,  which  he  naturally 
found  to  lie,  not  in  his  leadership  of  a  new  sect,  but  in  the  emphasis  he 
laid  upon  the  two  ideas  of  the  divine  goodness  and  wisdom  and  the 
dignity  of  human  nature.  Dr.  Channing  lived  at  a  time  when  theology 
"  had  gone  wrong  at  both  ends,"  having  "  set  up  a  bad  doctrine  of  God 
and  a  bad  doctrine  of  man."  What  Channing  did  was  to  "take  up  his 
pencil  and  retouch  both  canvases,  so  that  Christianity  saw  a  new  image 
of  God  and  a  new  image  of  man."  Respecting  the  Trinitarian  contro- 
versies of  those  days,  Prof.  Swing  thought  that  it  was  not  the  number 
so  much  as  the  quality  of  the  Godhead  that  disturbed  the  religious  sen- 
sibilities of  men.  A  Deity  with  three  faces  might  not  be  so  bad,  if  each 
face  beamed  with  love.  The  speaker  alluded  to  the  criticism  of  Joseph 
Cook,  that  the  influence  of  Channing  is  on  the  wane ;  and  the  comment, 
"  Well  perhaps  it  is  so,"  was,  as  one  of  the  morning  papers  puts  it, 
"  spoken  highly  sarcastically,"  and  with  an  additional  touch  of  the  char- 
acteristic drawl.  Channing's  influence  is  on  the  wane,  said  Prof.  Swing, 
in  much  the  "  same  sense  as  abolitionism  is,  because  the  slave  is  free ; 
or  from  the  same  cause  that  induced  the  woman  in  the  Scriptures,  after 
she  had  found  her  piece  of  silver,  to  stop  sweeping  for  it;  or  for  the 
reason  that,  like  Alexander,  it  has  no  more  worlds  to  conquer."  The 
definite  outlines  of  Channing's  work  are  lost,  if  lost  at  all,  in  its  general 
adoption  and  assimilation  into  the  thought  of  the  day. 

Rev.  G.  C.  Lorimer,  the  popular  Baptist  preacher,  whose  weekly  con- 
gregations run  up  into  the  thousands  and  rival  those  of  Central  Church, 
followed  in  an  address  on  "  Channing  as  a  Philanthropist."  In  a  series 
of  brilliant  periods,  Boston  and  Boston  charities,  and  lastly  and  most  gen- 
erously Unitarian  labors  in  these  charities,  received  most  glowing  trib- 
utes. Whether  Dr.  Channing  understood  aright  the  scope  and  meaning 
of  Christ's  thoiight  or  not  might  be  open  to  question,  but  there  could 
be  no  difference  of  opinion  as  to  his  comprehension  of  the  Master's 
heart.  As  Dr.  Lorimer  is  a  straight-out  orthodox  clergyman,  it  should 
be  said  that,  for  a  perfectly  frank,  manly,  and  courteous  bearing  toward 
forms  of  thought  which  lie  must  hold  in  deep  distrust,  he  deserves  the 
laurels  of  the  occasion. 

After  him  came  Rev.  W.  R.  Alger,  with  the  congenial  theme  "The 
Character  of  Channing  as  an  Ideal  Force  in  the  Life  of  America."  He 
drew  a  contrast  between  the  average  ideals  of  the  Vanderbilt  and  Jay 
Gould  order,  produced  by  a  materialistic  age  like  the  present,  and  those 
types  of  the  highest  spiritual  excellence,  among  which  America  has  pro- 
duced one  of  the  greatest  in  Channing. 

To  Rev.  Dr.  Thomas,  the  liberal   Methodist,  was  assigned  the  topic  of 


264  CHANXING    CENTKNARY. 

Channing's  relation  to  the  anti-slavery  cause,  presumably,  the  speaker 
said,  because  he  was  a  Southerner.  After  expressing  the  great  pleasure 
he  felt  in  attending  a  meeting  of  this  kind,  he  proceeded  to  give  a  brief 
and  graphic  account  of  the  political  condition  of  the  North  and  South 
half  a  century  ago,  and  a  risiimi  of  the  work  of  Channing  in  the  cause 
of  human  freedom.  He  called  attention  to  the  persistent  religious  pur- 
pose underlying  all  that  Channing  did  and  said  on  this  subject,  and 
forming  the  inspiring  motive  of  his  life,  quoting  those  words  of  high 
faith  and  courage,  "  If  I  did  not  see  any  way  to  right  this  wrong,  I 
would  still  believe  there  was  a  way." 

Rev.  Brooke  Herford  made  the  concluding  address,  his  subject  being 
"  Channing's  Influence  in  Europe."  Channing  did  not  belong  to  America 
alone.  Channing  had  the  distinction,  growing  rarer  every  year,  of 
descent  from  one  of  those  families  that  did  not  come  over  in  the  "  May- 
flower." [Laughter.]  Europe  was  in  a  mighty  struggle  when  Channing 
was  a  young  man.  He  watched  the  career  of  Napoleon,  appalled  at  that 
conqueror's  wickedness,  and  never  dazzled  by  the  splendors  of  his 
success.  He  appreciated  the  fact  that  England  was,  almost  single- 
handed,  fighting  the  battle  of  freedom ;  and  he  opposed  his  country's  war 
with  England.  As  Channing  appreciated  Europe,  so  he  was  appreciated 
by  Europe.  Next  to  Irving,  he  was  the  first  man  to  compel  Englishmen 
to  read  .American  books.  His  collected  works  were  published  first  in 
England.  His  essay  on  Self-culture  was  the  foundation  of  many  a 
library  and  reading-club  in  England.  It  was  in  its  time  almost  the'text- 
book  of  the  self-education  of  thousands  of  young  men  of  England.  Mr. 
Herford  cited  the  estimates  of  Channing  entertained  by  Frederic  Rob- 
ertson, Sismundi,  Laboulaye,  and  Bunsen.  His  works  were  translated 
into  all  the  leading  languages  of  Europe.  ^  They  were  softening  the 
Lutheranism  of  Sweden,  they  were  eagerly  read  by  Calvinistic  pastors  in 
Hungary,  and  an  Italian  statesman  said,  "  On  Channing's  line,  religion 
is  still  possible  to  Italy."  [Applause.]  Ten  years  ago,  it  was  doubted 
if  an  edition  of  ten  thousand  copies  of  Channing's  works  could  be  sold. 
Before  that  edition  w-as  issued,  twenty  thousand  were  subscribed  for ; 
and  now  an  edition  of  one  hundred  thousand  was  being  prepared.  This 
evening,  Channing's  centenary  was  being  celebrated  in  many  of  the 
leading  European  cities.  The  finest  town  hall  in  England,  in  his  old 
city  of  Manchester,  was  echoing  to  eulogies  such  as  they  were  listen- 
ing to  in  Chicago ;  and  in  London  a  great  meeting  was  being  addressed 
by  Rev.  Baldwin  Brown,  the  leading  English  Congregationalist,  and 
Thomas  Hughes ;  and  Rev.  James  Martineau  had  come  out  of  his 
retirement  to  say  one   more  word  in   public  for  the  memory  of  his  old 


CELEBRATION    AT    CHICAGO.  265 

friend.     Mr.  Herford  concluded   with  a  prophecy  of    Channing's   ever 
widening  and  deepening  influence. 

In  every  particular,  the  Channing  memorial  celebration  in  Chicago 
was  a  triumphant  success.  By  means  of  it,  the  bonds  of  brotherly  love 
and  religious  fellowship  will  be  strengthened  anew,  and  a  multitude  of 
sweet  and  helpful  influences  set  to  work  in  favor  of  spiritual  freedom 
and  moral  culture. 


The  addresses  of  Prof.  David  Swing,  Rev.  H.  W.  Thomas, 
D.D.,  Rev.  George  C.  Lorimer,  D.D.,  and  Rev.  WilHani  R. 
Alger,  are  given  here  in  full,  as  they  appeared  in  the  Chicago 
Alliance  of  April  17. 

CHANNING  AS  A  RELIGIOUS  KEFORMER. 
By  Prof.  David  Swing. 

This  evening,  set  apart  for  expressions  of  regard  toward 
the  name  of  a  great  Christian  worker,  our  friendship  will 
all  be  good  and  true  and  a  unit,  but  opinions  will  be  many' 
as  to  wherein  lay  the  influence  of  him  we  recall.  In  my 
mind,  the  influence  and  merit  of  Channing  came  not  from 
his  opposition  to  the  notion  of  the  Trinity,  but  from  his 
exaltation  of  man.  The  oneness  of  God  and  the  secondary 
position  of  Jesus  Christ  had  been  taught  fully  and  clearly 
for  three  hundred  years.  In  the  north  of  Ireland  there  were 
Presbyteries  of  Unitarian  Presbyterians,  and  through  Eng- 
land there  were  many  Baptist  Unitarians.  The  names  of 
Milton,  Samuel  Clark,  Lardner,  Locke,  and  Isaac  Newton, 
may  well  remind  us  that  William  Ellery  Channing  was  born 
too  late  to  become  illustrious  or  influential  by  teaching  that 
only  the  heavenly  Father  is  God.  Adding  somewhat  to 
the  momentum  of  this  doctrine,  his  most  significant  task 
was  to  transform  man,  a  "vile  worm,"  into  man,  an  angel  ; 
and  to  transform  a    despotic    Deity  into    a    most   just    and 


266  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

tender  friend.  It  was  not  tiie  tkrceness  of  the  orthodox 
Deity  which  harmed  that  form  of  Christianity,  but  it  was 
the  infinite  cruelty  of  the  " threeness"  which  wrought  the 
injury.  A  creator  of  three  faces  would  not  harm  religion, 
if  each  countenance  shone  with  love.  For  innocent  mor- 
tals to  be  punished  for  the  glory  of  God  was  not  made 
anv  less  rational  or  more  cruel  by  the  consideration  that 
this  God  had  three  persons  in  the  Godhead.  The  Jehovah 
which  ordered  the  exterminating  wars  of  old  Canaan  was 
not  a  trinity,  but  a  unity,  thus  teaching  us  that  the  bad 
element  in  old  Christianity  was  not  the  number  of  the 
persons  in  the  Godhead,  but  it  was  the  quality  of  the  per- 
sons. Moses  and  Joshua  were  Unitarians,  but  they  were 
not  Channings.  The  beauty  of  Unitarianism  lies  more  in 
its  picture  of  God  than  in  its  unity  of  him.  Not  from 
unity  as  an  idea,  or  from  it  as  a  spiritual  truth,  did  this 
noble  Christian  draw  his  eminent  place  in  the  world's 
memory,  but  this  high  position  came  from  the  excessive 
light  which  this  clear  mind  poured  upon  the  nature  of  God 
and  upon  human  life  in  all  its  details  of  duty  and  hope.  Let 
us  permit  him  to  announce  his  own  form  of  Christianity : 
"  From  the  direction  theology  has  taken,  it  has  been  thought 
that  to  ascribe  anything  to  man  was  to  detract  from  God. 
The  disposition  has  been  to  establish  striking  contrasts 
between  man  and  God,  and  not  to  see  and  rejoice  in  the  like- 
'ness  between  them.  It  has  been  thought  that  to  darken  the 
creature  was  the  way  to  bring  out  more  clearly  the  splendor 
of  the  Creator.  .  .  .  Man's  place  is  in  the  dust.  The  entire 
prostration  of  his  faculties  is  the  true  homage  he  is  to  offer 
God."  Channing  deeply  felt  the  falseness  and  harmfulness 
of  any  moral  system  which  tended  to  make  man  degrade 
himself,  and  hence  his  most  powerful  blows  were  always 
dealt  out  against  those  dogmas  which  made  humanity  a 
lot  of   rubbish  fit  only  to  be   burned;  and    for  all    dogmas 


CELEBRATION    AT    CHICAGO.  26/ 

that  could  make  the  mind  look  toward  education  and  high 
character  and  which  could  fill  the  heart  with  both  earthly 
and  heavenly  hope. 

In  the  early  days  of  most  of  us  there  were  several  denom- 
inations which  could  not  find  language  that  could  express 
too  strongly  the  richness  with  which  all  men  deserved 
eternal  punishment.  Man  was  the  being  to  receive  and 
God  just  the  being  to  bestow  inexpressible  calamity.  Chan- 
ning  came  upon  this  dark  scene  a  messenger  of  more  light 
and  peace.  He  said,  Man  is  not  such  a  fit  subject  of  pain, 
and  God  is  not  the  being  to  inflict  pain.  Theology  had  gone 
wrong  at  both  ends  of  its  thought.  It  had  set  up  a  bad 
picture  of  God  and  a  bad  picture  of  man.  He  whom  we 
remember  to-night  took  up  his  pencil  and  retouched  both 
canvases ;  and,  behold,  when  his  hand  dropped,  Christianity 
saw  the  image  of  Jehovah  in  the  benignant  face  of  Christ, 
and  saw  in  the  same  temple  a  grand  portraiture  of  man. 

The  subjects  of  sermons  gradually  changed  in  the  evan- 
gelical pulpit.  It  did  not  abate  its  zeal  over  the  distinctive 
doctrines  of  the  cross,  but  it  found  time  and  impulse  for 
discourses  upon  education  and  temperance  and  emancipa- 
tion, and  industry  and  frugality,  and  upon  all  the  consid- 
erations of  success  and  happiness  in  this  world.  A  broad 
man  sweeping  along  with  so  much  of  eloquence  and  sweet- 
ness, and  touching  society  at  all  points,  waked  up  much 
imitation  even  among  clergymen  who  differed  with  their 
model  in  some  one  or  more  particulars.  The  old-time 
clergy  came  out  of  their  cells  of  abstraction  rather  slowly. 
They  always  had  come  out  in  hours  of  great  peril  for  State 
or  Church  ;  but,  as  soon  as  some  great  national  or  religious 
peril  had  passed  away,  they  relapsed  at  once  into  abstrac- 
tion about  theological,  far-away  matters,  and  could  not 
realize  that  all  life  is  storm-tossed.  The  old  pulpit  could 
preach   for  liberty   in   war  times  ;  l)ut,  when    peace    came,    it 


268  CHANNIXG    CENTENARY. 

could,  if  need  be,  own  a  few  slaves.  And  it  seemed  aware 
of  the  evils  of  intemperance ;  but,  for  years  and  years  to- 
gether, it  could  preach  the  cardinal  doctrines,  as  it  called 
them,  and  meanwhile  taste  a  little  strong  drink,  if  the 
weather  were  too  hot  or  too  cold.  It  sometimes  touched 
mankind  in  bulk,  but  seldom  in  detail. 

Into  the  midst  of  such  forms  of  Christianity,  Channing 
came,  not  more  as  a  Unitarian  than  as  a  teacher  of  a  whole 
Christian  civilization.  His  task  was  an  adaptation  of  Christ 
to  human  life, —  a  forerunner  of  such  teachings  as  now 
appear  in  the  Manliness  of  Christ  and  in  the  discourses 
of  Dean  Stanley  and  Howard  Crosby  and  Dr.  Storrs.  He 
brought  new  themes  to  Presbyterian  and  Methodist  and 
Episcopalian,  and  helped  build  up  a  demand  for  all  such  books 
as  Thompson's  Sermons  to  Young  Men.  Powerful  as  this 
orator  was  in  presenting  the  imity  of  God,  he  was  more 
effective  and  more  demanded  in  his  grand  exaltation  of 
the  individual  man  and  woman  and  child.  The  same  ration- 
alism which  led  this  careful  thinker  to  reject  the  Trinity 
led  him  to  apply  the  life  and  teachings  of  Jesus  to  earthly 
things ;  for  reason  dares  not  slight  a  life  that  now  is  for 
one  that  is  to  come.  And  the  same  rationalism  attended 
this  heart,  when  it  sat  down  to  interpret  the  sacred  books. 
Channingism  was,  therefore,  a  Christian  rationalism,  the 
calmest  and  most  devout  that  had  appeared  up  to  the  date 
of  its  birth.  It  was  the  reason  of  Bacon  or  Isaac  Newton, 
joined  with  the  spirituality  of  a  Fenelon  or  an  Augustine. 
It  was  prayer  separated  from  credulity.  After  urging  morn- 
ing prayer,  he  passes  to  evening  prayer,  in  the  following 
strain:  "The  evening  is  a  fit  time  for  prayer,  not  only  as 
it  ends  the  day,  but  as  it  immediately  precedes  the  hour 
of  repose.  We  are  soon  to  sink  into  insensibility  and  sleep. 
How  fit  that  we  resign  ourselves  to  the  care  of  that  Being 
who  never  sleeps,  to  whom  the  darkness  is  as  the  light,  and 


CELEBRATION    AT    CHICAGO.  269 

whose  providence  is  our  only  safety  !  How  fit  to  entreat 
Him  that  he  would  keep  us  to  another  day  ;  or,  if  our  bed 
should  prove  our  grave,  that  he  would  give  us  a  part  in  the 
resurrection  of  the  just,  and  awake  us  to  a  purer  and 
immortal  life  !  "  Words  which,  strangely  mingle  logic  and 
piety,  and  remind  us  of  some  one  soul  that  must  be  partly  a 
Carlyle  and  partly  an  Isaac  Watts. 

This  influence  upon  surrounding  creeds  came  as  much 
from  manner  as  from  philosophy.  No  reformer  ever  treated 
an  opponent  more  justly  or  kindly.  It  has  not  often  been  the 
good  fortune  of  Calvinism  t©  meet  so  fair  an  opponent.  In 
his  most  powerful  review  of  that  form  of  belief,  he  makes  an 
opening  statement,  which  many  others  in  similar  movements 
on  either  side  of  a  question  have  neglected  to  introduce  : 
"  We  intend  to  treat  this  subject  with  great  freedom,  but 
we  beg  that  it  may  be  understood  that  by  Calvinism  we 
intend  only  the  peculiarities  of  that  system.  We  would  also 
have  it  remembered  that  these  peculiarities  form  a  small  part 
of  the  religious  faith  of  a  Calvinist.  He  joins  with  them 
the  general  and  most"  important  truths  of  Christianity.  .  .  . 
Accordingly,  it  has  been  our  happiness  to  see  in  the  numer- 
ous body  by  which  they  are  professed  some  of  the  brightest 
examples  of  Christian  virtue.  Our  hostility  to  the  doctrine 
does  not  extend  to  its  advocates."  To  the  favorite  ideas  of 
Channing  add  this  justness  and  even  sweetness  of  spirit, 
and  it  will  be  seen  that  this  Christian  affected  all  adjacent 
theology,  not  only  by  his  logical  power,  but  by  his  wide 
sympathy. 

I  must  not  s-peak  beyond  my  limited  time.  Joseph  Cook 
has  said  that  "Channing's  influence  is  on  the  decline." 
This  may  be  true.  If  true,  the  explanation  must  be  found 
in  the  parallel  that  the  fame  of  abolitionism  has  declined 
because  the  slaves  have  become  free,  in  the  parallel  that 
after  the  woman  in  the  Bible  had  found  her  lost  piece    of 


270  CIIANNING    CENTKNAKY. 

silver  she  quit  sweeping  for  it.  Channingism  has  perhaps 
failed,  like  Alexander,  because  it  has  no  more  worlds  to 
conquer.  Even  Joseph  Cook  himself  resembles  this  new 
star  more  than  he  resembles  those  that  went  down  before 
this  new  era  came.  If  Channingism  has  failed,  it  is  be- 
cause  it  has  been  so  absorbed  by  the  American  Church  and 
assimilated  that  it  has  lost  its  definite  outline  by  becoming 
almost  universal.  The  Evangelical  churches  have  not  sur- 
rendered their  estimate  of  Christ,  but  in  other  respects  they 
have  journeyed  toward  rather  than  away  from  him  whose 
memory  we  recall  to-night. 


CHANNINa'S   ANTI-SLAVERY  WORK, 
By  Rev,  H,  W,  Thomas,  D,D, 

I  had  no  conference  with  the  committee  in  reference  to 
the  part  I  should  take  on  this  programme  ;  and  I  suppose 
they  assigned  me  this,  because  they  knew  I  was  a  South- 
erner,—  born  and  raised  in  a  slave  state.  [Laughter.] 
Well,  I  have  always  been  proud  of  that,  and  proud  that 
I  came  from  one  of  the  very  first  families  of  the  South. 
[Laughter.]  We  never  owned  any  slaves,  and  we  did  our 
own  harvest  work.  [Applause.]  I  was  quite  an  abolition- 
ist when  I  was  but  two  years  old  [laughter]  ;  and  my  hatred 
of  despotism  and  oppression  of  every  kind,  physical  or  men- 
tal, by  Church  or  State,  has  increased  with  every  passing 
year.     [Applause.] 

Slavery  has  always  formed  a  dark  page  in  the  history  of 
our  world.  It  has  resulted  from  despotism,  from  wars,  from 
captivities,  and  from  the  cruelty  and  avarice  of  men.  But 
not  until  the  last  few  hundred  years  did  it  cease  to  be  gen- 
eral in  its  victims,  and  settle  down  upon  the  poor,  inoffen- 
sive, and  helpless  African. 


CELEBRATION    AT    CHICAGO.  2/1 

The  great  anti-slavery  agitation  began  in  England,  about 
a  hundred  years  ago,  under  the  labors  of  Wilberforce  and 
Clarkson  and  Pitt.  In  1791,  Wilberforce  moved  to  bring 
before  the  House  of  Parliament  a  bill  to  prevent  the  impor- 
tation of  slaves  to  the  British  colonies.  In  1807,  under  the 
administration  of  Fox,  he  secured  its  adoption  by  both 
houses.  Then  he  and  those  noble  workers  for  liberty  be- 
gan the  agitation  of  the  plan  for  the  emancipation  of  the 
slaves  in  the  West  Indies,  and  in  1833  — forty-seven  years 
ago  —  this  act  was  passed. 

It  was  natural  that  the  French  Revolution,  and  all  these 
movements  in  England  for  liberty,  should  have  excited  the 
people  of  our  own  country ;  and  it  was  under  the  influence 
of  such  excitements  that  Channing  spent  his  early  and  his 
college  years.  After  graduation,  he  spent  a  year  and  a 
half  in  Richmond,  Va.,  making  his  home  with  a  Mr.  Ran- 
dolph, chief  marshal  of  the  State.  Here  his  mind  was  much 
exercised.  He  studied  philosophy  and  theology,  and  was 
deeply  moved  at  the  condition  of  society  and  the  sufferings 
of  the  colored  people.  He  says,  "  I  could  weep  over  a  novel 
or  over  the  sufferings  of  the  poor  ;  and  then  the  thought 
came  to  me  that  I  feel  deeply,  but  what  am  I  doing  for 
these  people  ?  "  This  question  aroused  him  to  thoughts  of 
action.  A  few  years  later,  he  spent  the  winter  in  the  Island 
of  Bermuda.  Here  he  was  still  more  deeply  impressed  with 
the  call  of  duty,  and  began  the  outline  of  his  first  work  on 
the  evils  of  the  slave  system. 

To  understand  Dr.  Channing's  position  and  work,  we 
should  reflect  upon  the  condition  of  society  in  this  country 
in  those  days.  In  the  South  there  was  the  general  i)ro- 
slavery  sentiment,  but  there  were  two  classes.  One  class 
was  radically  pro-slavery, —  the  "fire-eaters"  of  the  South, 
as  we  call  them.  The  other  class  was  pro-sla\-cr)',  but  felt 
that  it  was  hardly  right,  and  yet  quieted  their  consciences 


272  CIIANN'ING    CENTENARY. 

in  the  reflection  that  it  was  sanctioned  by  the  law  and  the 
church.  In  the  North  there  were  three  classes  :  the  extreme 
conservatives,  who  looked  with  favor  upon  the  Southern  in- 
stitutions ;  the  extreme  radicals  or  abolitionists,  who  sought 
the  destruction  of  these  institutions;  and,  between  them,  the 
clearly  pronounced  anti-slavery  party,  who  believed  slavery 
to  be  wrong,  and  yet  who  could  not  wholly  sanction  the 
course  pursued  by  the  abolitionists.  To  this  third  or  middle 
party,  Channing  belonged.  He  was  aroused  to  greater  ac- 
tion by  the  murder  of  Lovejoy  in  1837,  and  the  refusal  of 
the  authorities  of  Boston  to  open  Faneuil  Hall  for  a  public 
meeting. 

Dr.  Channing's  writings  on  the  subject  are  the  following  : 

The  Evils  of  Slavery  in  1835  ;  in  1837,  Letter  to  Henry 
Clay;  in   1839,  Rcph'  ^^  Clay  ;  in  1840,  Emancipation  in  the 

West  Indies ;  in  1842,  Duty  of  the  Free  States ;  and,  also  in 
the  same  year,  his  last  address  at  Lenox,  Mass.  I  can  only 
suggest  the  bearing  of  these  able  works.  He  sought  to 
bring  all  questions  to  the  great  principles  of  right.  "  The 
universe  is  ruled  by  almighty  rectitude  and  impartial  good- 
ness," was  his  foundation  argument.  He  claimed  that 
slavery  violated  the  principles  of  right, —  showed  its  effects 
upon  the  slave,  the  master,  the  home,  and  society.  And 
yet  he  was  opposed  to  violence,  to  inciting  insurrection. 
"  Better  bare,"  he  said,  "  our  own  bosoms  to  the  knife  than 
to  put  it  in  the  hand  of  the  slave  to  slay  his  master."  But 
he  claimed  that  we  should  give  the  slaves  our  moral  support, 
and  resisted  the  arrogance  of  the  South  in  trying  to  muzzle 
the  press  of  the  North  and  to  silence  her  orators.  Channing 
calmly  met  Clay's  argument, —  that  slavery  was  necessary  for 
the  security  of  the  government :  he  pointed  to  a  statue  of 
liberty  with  a  "  slave  and  a  chain  as  a  pedestal."  To  Clay's 
claim  that  the  North  had  $1,200,000,000  in  slaves,  Channing 
replied,  the  more,  the  worse  ;  that  money  did  not  weigh  in 


CELEBRATION    AT    CHICAGO.  2/3 

morals,  and  the  amount  did  not  change  the  character.  The 
author  of  Memoirs  of  Harriet  Martitieaii  does  great  injus- 
tice to  Channing  by  claiming,  in  the  presence  of  these  facts, 
that,  while  Webster  and  others  were  the  legal  and  business 
apologists  of  slavery  in  the  North,  Channing  was  brought 
in  to  cover  its  religious  aspects.  Channing  said  all  a  man 
could  say, —  spoke  wisely,  plainly,  and  well.  He  claimed  the 
right  and  duty  of  the  North  to  speak,  and  he  spoke.  He 
claimed  that  the  earth  had  better  be  given  over  to  wild 
beasts  than  that  men  should  sanction  wrong.  He  had 
great  faith  in  the  power  of  trust  and  principle,  and  that 
these  would  somehow  prevail.  He  believed  that  the  love 
of  God,  that  had  reached  the  world  in  Christ,  was  a  power  to 
reconcile  the  world,  and  that  it  would  open  all  prison-doors. 
In  his  last  address,  only  a  few  months  before  his  death,  he 
says,  "  Come,  O  Kingdom  of  God,  for  which  we  daily  pray, — 
come,  and  break  every  chain,  set  every  prisoner  free." 

My  friends,  Channing  went  to  sleep.  Wilberforce  and 
Fox  and  Pitt  were  gathered  to  their  rest.  In  our  day,  the 
great  struggle  came.  The  fife  and  the  drum  were  heard  in 
the  land.  Our  fathers  and  brothers  and  sons  went  to  the 
war.  The  flag  was  saved,  the  slaves  were  freed.  And,  oh  ! 
with  what  joy  must  these  toilers  for  liberty  —  Wilberforce 
and  Clarkson,  Parker  and  Sumner,  and  Lovejoy  and  Lincoln 
—  look  down  from  the  heavenly  heights  upon  the  great 
work,  upon  a  land  that  is  free !  Had  Channing  lived  in  the 
days  of  the  Rebellion,  he  would  have  been  for  the  Union  and 
the  P2mancipation.  Were  he  here  to-day,  he  would  say, 
Stand  by  the  freedmen  ;  help  the  refuges  ;  build  schools  and " 
churches  all  over  the  South  for  these  poor  people.  And 
let  us  take  up  his  work,  and  carry  it  on  till  all  minds  and 
hearts  may  rejoice  in  the  blessings  of  liberty  and  justice. 


2/4  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

ADDRESS   OF  REV.  GEO.  C.  LORIMER,  D.D, 

The  hiii^^hest  exj^ression  of  the  religious  idea  is  philan- 
thropy. It  is  the  sublimest,  as  it  is  the  truest,  embodiment 
of  its  spirit.  It  is  the  purest  worship,  the  divinest  ritual. 
In  comparison  with  it,  processions,  mitres,  crosiers,  tiaras, 
smoking  altars,  glittering  shrines,  and  all  the  tawdry  frip- 
pery of  sacerdotalism,  are  vulgar,  childish,  and  obtrusive. 
Beneficence  cannot  but  be  the  supreme  symbol  of  a  religion 
whose  Author  is  pre-eminently  Love.  Goodness  can  be  the 
only  real  incarnation  of  the  infinitely  Good ;  and  giving 
ourselves  for  others,  the  only  adequate  exposition  of  a  sys- 
tem that  reveals  an  All-Father  giving  his  Son,  and  the  Son 
as  giving  himself,  for  the  life  of  the  world. 

Coleridge  has  said  that,  "  to  restore  a  commonplace  truth 
to  its  first  uncommon  lustre,  you  need  only  translate  it  into 
action."  In  my  judgment,  this  was  one  of  the  most  distin- 
guished features  of  Dr.  Channing's  brilliant  career.  He 
translated  into  the  language  both  of  doctrine  and  conduct 
the  great  commonplace  of  Christianity, —  its  philanthropy, — 
and  set  it  before  society  radiant  with  its  original  beauty. 
Dr.  Channing  was  beyond  everything  else  a  philanthrojDist. 
Whether  he  fully  grasped  the  vast  themes  of  Christ's  min- 
istry, or  rose  to  the  high  lev^el  of  his  transcendent  thought, 
may  be  open  to  debate;  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he 
sympathized  with  the  heart  of  love,  and  entered  deeply  into 
the  spirit  that  led  the  Saviour  to  care  for  the  neglected,  to 
rescue  the  perishing,  to  deliver  the  captive,  and  to  lift  up 
the  fallen.  The  philanthropy  of  Dr.  Channing  was  certainly 
orthodox,  whatever  we  may  think  of  his  theology.  And  as 
charity  never  faileth,  even  when  his  teachings  shall  fail,  and 
the  memory  of  his-  eloquent  tongue  shall  cease  to  stir,  and 
his  knowledge  shall  vanish  quite  away,  that  shall  still  abide 
to  guide  and  bless  mankind. 


CELEBRATION    AT    CHICAGO.  2/5 

If  we  may  judge  the  influence  of  this  servant  of  God  by 
the  community  in  which  he  lived  and  labored,  we  will  cease 
to  question  its  Christly  character.  Boston,  eminent  in  let- 
ters, is  supereminent  in  charities.  That  old  city,  radical  in 
its  ideas  of  right,  uncompromising  in  its  devotion  to  prin- 
ciple, stern  and  rugged,  is,  perhaps  beyond  all  others,  the 
one  most  easily  moved  by  the  appeals  of  suffering  and 
sorrow.  To  the  cry  of  distress,  its  ear  is  never  closed  ;  to 
the  plaint  of  indigence,  its  hand  is  ever  open.  And  whether 
the  wail  of  anguish  arises  from  a  poverty-stricken  South,  a 
fire-scarred  West,  or  a  famine-stricken  Ireland,  it  is  as  ready 
to  help  as  the  dews  are  to  refresh  the  sun-scorched  flowers, 
or  the  rain  to  fertilize  the  drouth-encrusted  earth.  Relie:- 
ious,  political,  and  commercial  rivalries  and  animosities  melt 
like  snow  before  the  genial  warmth  of  its  philanthropy,  and 
no  more  bound  its  gracious  ministry  than  glaciers,  icebergs, 
or  grinding  frozen  seas  restrain  the  rising  of  the  sun.  This 
spirit  is  common  to  all  classes,  all  societies,  churches,  sects, 
and  parties  in  Boston,  and  is  conspicuously  prominent  in 
that  religious  body  of  which  Dr.  Channing  was  an  honored 
member.  And,  as  long  as  it  continues  to  number  among 
its  representatives  such  noble  men  as  Edward  Everett  Hale, 
whose  truly  human  soul,  whose  cosmopolitan  tastes,  sen- 
timents, and  culture,  and  whose  unfailing  love  impart  a 
gentle  cadence  to  the  music  of  his  speech,  the  Unitarians 
will  continue  to  reign  a  queen  among  the  sisterhood  of 
charity.  How  much  of  this  spirit  is  traceable  to  Dr.  Chan- 
ning, I  leave  others  to  determine ;  but,  that  it  is  largely  due 
to  his  influence,  a  brief  analysis  of  his  jDhilanthropy  will 
demonstrate. 

If  we  examine  its  source,  we  shall  find  it  springing  from 
an  abiding  sympathy  with  humanity.  Throughout  his  min- 
istry, he  laid  great  stress  on  love, —  the  love  of  God  for  man, 
the  love  of  man  for  man.     So  deep  was  this  divine  passion 


276  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

in  his  breast,  and  so  strong,  that  he  was  acutely  pained  at 
the  thought  of  every  evil  that  afflicts  the  race.  He  con- 
fessed that  "his  nature  was  such  that  he  turned  away  from 
the  contemplation  of  evil,"  and  added  that  "his  mind  sought 
the  good,  the  perfect,  the  beautiful."  "It  is  only,"  he  said, 
"  from  a  sense  of  duty  that  I  read  a  narrative  of  guilt  in  the 
daily  i">apers."  To  him,  "  souls  in  evil  "  were  a  terrible  sight ; 
and  the  partial  success  which  attended  all  efforts  to  deliver 
them  was  appalling.  Continually,  he  was  haunted  by  a  grand 
ideal  of  humanity.  He  regarded  its  redemption  as  of  price- 
less worth,  and  as  claiming  the  best  endeavors  of  the  pure 
and  enlightened.  "  One  soul,"  he  said,  "  is  worth  more  than 
material  worlds."  "  Men  travel  far  to  see  the  wonders  of 
nature  and  art.  The  greatest  wonder  is  man  himself."  He 
believed  in  the  essential  "grandeur  of  man's  nature,  its  like- 
ness to  God,  its  immortality,  its  power  of  endless  progress." 
And  describing  him  as  the  "  victim  of  sin,"  "  as  the  fallen, 
but  redeemed,"  he  regarded  Christ's  advent  as  the  sign  of 
the  high  value  placed  by  God  himself  upon  his  ruined  creat- 
ures. Condition,  station,  shame,  ignorance,  even  crime, 
could  never  obscure  to  his  eyes  the  immeasurable  impor- 
tance of  the  soul,  or  lessen  his  interest  in  its  well-being.  He 
never  sympathized  with  the  theory  now  growing  in  favor, — 
that  philanthropy  is  simply  a  measure  of  society,  inspired  by 
social  perils,  and  determined  by  its  necessities.  No  more 
did  he  approve  of  that  selfish  utilitarian  philosophy  that  puts 
happiness  before  morality.  He  was  not  a  nice  calculator  of 
profits  and  losses,  but  expressly  taught  that  good  should  be 
attempted,  not  so  much  for  the  benefit  to  be  reaped  by  the 
doer  as  for  the  blessings  it  confers  on  the  recipient.  In  a 
word,  he  fully  realized  the  spirit  of  the  Master,  who  sought 
not  primarily  the  elevation  of  society,  nor  the  mere  correc- 
tion of  its  abuses,  but,  first  of  all,  the  salvation  of  man  as 
man,  and   that,  too,  not    from   an  arithmetical   balancing  of 


CELEBRATION    AT    CHICAGO.  2// 

advantages  to  be  gained,  but  from  an  intense  and  a  consum- 
ing love  of  the  being  in  whom  God  had  wrought  his  image, 
and  for  whom  he  had  given  his  Son  to  die. 

This  thought  furnishes  the  key  to  Dr.  Channing's  philan- 
thropic methods.  They  were  essentially  spiritual.  He  pro- 
claimed no  superficial  cure  for  the  deep-seated  diseases  and 
evils  of  the  race.  His  reliance  was  not  centred  in  external 
means  and  material  agencies.  In  his  opinion,  poverty  never 
can  be  permanently  relieved  by  bounteous  gifts  of  fuel,  food, 
or  clothing.  Such  assistance  he  even  looked  on  with  dis- 
trust, as  tending  to  pauperize  large  bodies  of  people.  At 
best,  it  could  only  be  of  temporary  service,  and  under  no 
state  of  the  case  should  be  relied  on  permanently.  His 
theory  was.  Educate  the  people  to  take  care  of  themselves, 
and  they  will  overcome  the  evils  of  their  condition.  Con- 
centrate beneficence  on  the  elevation  of  the  man,  and  he  will 
take  care  of  himself  afterward.  This  explains  the  stress  he 
laid  on  the  preaching  of  the  gospel.  He  knew  its  capabili- 
ties, its  tendency  to  produce  a  noble  type  of  self-dependent 
manhood ;  and  he  would  have  every  means  used  to  bring 
the  entire  community  under  its  influence.  For  this  reason, 
he  took  great  interest  in  .what  is  known  as  the  Ministry 
at  Large, —  an  agency  appointed  to  carry  the  teachings  and 
offices  of  Christianity  to  the  poor, —  and  expressed  a  desire 
to  see  such  congregations  gathered  under  its  preaching  as 
assembled  to  hear  the  Methodists  of  his  day.  He  carefully 
sought  the  reason  for  Mr.  O.  A.  Brownson's  comparative 
failure  to  attract  and  hold  the  people,  when  that  gentleman 
tried  to  draw  them  to  his  ministry,  and  attributed  it  to  the 
philosophical  style  of  his  pulpit  efforts.  While  he  did  not 
believe  in  the  perpetuity  of  the  Jewish  Sabbath,  he  regarded 
the  Lord's  day  as  sacred,  and  advocated  its  observance  as  a 
day  of  private  and  public  religious  instructions,  not  to  be 
desecrated  by  amusements,  for  which  he  would  have  society 


2/8  CIIANNINC    CI".N  ri'.XARV. 

set  apart  a  portion  of  Saturday,  lie  thought  that  the  day 
could  not  be  more  liighly  honored  than  by  consecrating  it  to 
instruction  in  Christianity  and  to  the  practical  exemplifica- 
tion of  its  beneficence.  He  would  have  it  fully  devoted  to 
man  as  it  was  originally  made  for  man, —  not  made  for 
him  to  abuse,  to  pervert,  to  degrade  into  an  opportunity 
for  riot,  debauchery,  or  serviceless  amusements.  The  day 
rightly  observed  would  tend  to  the  regeneration  of  man- 
hood, and  hence  the  high  value  it  had  in  Dr.  Channing's 
eyes.  This  also  accounts  for  the  part  he  bore  in  the  educa- 
tional movements  of  his  time.  Fully  sympathizing  with 
Horace  Mann,  supplementing  his  labors  with  his  pen,  he 
also  gave  to  the  world  his  stimulating  paper  on  Self-culture, 
which  has  exerted  so  wholesome  and  so  wide-spread  an  in- 
fluence for  good  both  in  Europe  and  America.  The  secret 
of  all  these  endeavors  was  his  profound  conviction  that  the 
needs  of  the  race  required  pre-eminently  the  elevation  and 
enlightenment  of  each  individual,  and  that  every  method 
that  came  short  of  this  would  be  fatally  defective.  I  am  in- 
clined to-night  to  remind  you  emphatically  of  his  position, 
as  it  may  warn  you  against  some  illusions  of  philanthropy 
that  are  at  present  current  in  almost  every  community.  We 
have  only  recently  been  told  that  it  would  be  better  to  break 
up  our  churches,  silence  our  preachers,  sell  the  property 
held  by  different  denominations,  and  give  all  to  the  poor. 
This  has  an  air  of  philanthropy  about  it,  and  many  regard  it 
as  the  outcome  of  lofty  wisdom.  Channing  would  have  de- 
nounced it  as  the  consummation  of  folly.  Hew  down  your 
orchards,  dry  up  the  sources  of  your  streams,  and  expect  fruit 
and  expansive  rivers  afterwards,  and  you  will  be  less  de- 
ceived than  you  are  by  the  expectation  that  the  extirpation 
of  Christianity  and  the  conversion  of  the  proceeds  for  the 
benefit  of  the  indigent  will  end  all  poverty  and  suffering. 
Such  a  measure  might  bring  temporary  physical  relief;  but, 


CELEBRATION    AT    CHICAGO.  2^9 

as  the  sources  of  spiritual  renewal  would  perish  through  it, 
the  permanent  condition  of  humanity  would  remain  sadder 
and  more  debased  than  ever.  Some  of  our  modern  reformers 
look  to  government,  to  agitations  and  strikes,  or  to  associa- 
tions, as  affording  means  of  practically  solving  the  problems 
which  perplex  society.  It  is  simply  another  form  of  the 
error  that  relief  is  to  come  from  without,  not  from  within. 
Channing  appreciated  good  government,  but  he  recognized 
the  limits  of  its  beneficent  power.  Some  things  it  cannot 
do.  He  realized  this,  and  compared  it  to  the  walls  of  a 
house,  affording  protection  to  the  machinery,  but  it  cannot 
fabricate  the  goods.  The  people  make  the  government,  and 
only  in  a  very  inferior  sense  does  the  government  make  the 
people.  Strikes  and  revolutions  Dr.  Channing  looked  on 
with  distrust,  and  he  dreaded  the  "tyranny  incident  to  asso- 
ciated action."  He  was  not  the  enemy  of  associations, 
but  in  a  paper  pointed  out  their  perils,  and  reaffirmed  his 
old  doctrine  of  individual  and  family  improvement.  And, 
in  this,  I  venture  to  say  that  he  interprets  the  method  of 
Jesus  Christ  as  it  is  presented  in  the  gospel;  and  I  am  old- 
fashioned  enough  to  avow  myself  a  sincere  believer  in  its 
efficacy. 

It  remains  for  me  to  add  that  the  philanthropy  of  Chan- 
ning was  all-inclusive  in  its  scope.  Every  year  produces 
some  reformer,  who  is  one-sided  and  partial,  the  partisan  of 
some  special  virtue  or  improvement.  He  is  apparently  ig- 
norant of  every  other  interest  than  the  one  that  has  secured 
his  special  advocacy,  or,  if  not,  is  at  least  indifferent  to  its 
welfare.  It  may  be  temperance,  labor-reform.  Sabbath  ob- 
servance, kindness  to  animals,  the  social  evil,  or  some  other 
movement  of  equal  imj^ortance.  Whatever  it  is,  he  gives 
himself  up  absolutely  to  its  success,  becomes  so  absorbed 
in  it  that  it  casts  into  the  shade  all  other  claims.  He  judges 
the  virtue  of  others  by  the  degree  of  sympathy  they  feel  in 


28o  CHANNING    Cr.NTENARV. 

his  idol,  and  is  ready  to  stone  them,  if  they  fail  to  worship  it 
as  unreserv'^edly  as  he  does.  But  this  was  not  characteristic 
of  Channing^.  His  mind  was  too  broad,  his  heart  too  large, 
for  so  narrow  and  discriminating  a  philanthropy.  He  ad- 
vocated temperance,  he  pleaded  the  cause  of  the  laboring 
man,  he  uttered  his  protest  against  war,  he  befriended  the 
criminal,  he  denounced  slavery  and  defended  liberty.  Even 
Abner  Kneeland,  condemned  by  the  courts  of  Massachusetts 
on  a  charge  of  atheism,  he  petitioned  for,  in  the  name  of 
that  freedom  which  is  the  heritage  of  unbelievers  as  well  as 
believers.  Thus  his  philanthropy  was  full-orbed,  compre- 
hensive, symmetrical,  as  will  be  the  philanthropy  of  every 
man  who  has  been  taught  in  the  school  of  Christ. 

As  I  close  this  resume,  I  deem  it  a  fitting  opportunity  to_ 
urge  upon  the  good  citizens  of  Chicago  the  example  of  this 
eminent  friend  of  humanity.  In  his  name, —  yea,  in  the 
name  of  One  higher,  from  whom  he  derived  his  inspiration, 
—  I  plead  for  education,  for  the  extension  of  its  blessings  to 
all  our  children,  and  for  special  efforts  to  make  this  one  of 
the  great  university  cities  of  the  world.  I  plead  for  temper- 
ance, for  the  better  observance  of  the  Sabbath,  and  for 
sympathy  with  the  poor  and  with  the  struggling  laboring 
classes.  Let  us  not  be  indifferent  to  these  great  objects  ; 
let  us  not  lose  sight  of  them  in  the  mad  pursuit  of  wealth 
and  material  splendor.  These  words  of  mine  are  but  echoes 
of  that  philanthropy  which  you  admire  in  Channing.  Happy 
shall  we  be,  if  even  the  echoes  shall  guide  us  to  the  field 
where  real  glory  is  to  be  won.  Remember  that  the  great- 
ness of  Chicago  is  indissolubly  interwoven  with  her  chari- 
ties, her  benefactions,  her  seats  of  learning,  and  that  the 
brotherhood  of  citizens  can  only  be  perfected  by  the  spirit 
of  philanthropy  reigning  among  them.  Let  philanthropy 
prevail,  and  our  people  will  be  blessed  ;  and,  though  creeds 
and  nationalities  may  sometimes  divide  us,  let  philanthropy 


CELEBRATION    AT    CHICAGO.  28 1 

rule,  and,  though  we  be  Calvinists,  Arminians,  or  Unita- 
rians, in  each  other  we  shall  trace  the  features  of  a  brother, 
and  in  each  other's  grasp  feel  the  warm  pulsations  of  a 
brother's  heart. 

ADDRESS  OF  REV,  W,  R,  ALGER. 

There  is  an  extreme  fitness  in  the  democratic  nature  of 
this  celebration,  in  which  not  only  the  liberal  professions 
and  the  leaders  of  society  are  represented,  but  also  the 
doors  are  opened  for  the  people  to  come  in  from  the  streets. 
For  a  great  man  sheds  lustre  on  those  below  him.  They 
are  seen  lifted  up  and  glorified  in  him.  The  greatness  of 
human  virtue  is  revealed  in  him.  The  transcendent  quali- 
ties shown  in  his  life,  which  enable  us  to  think  of  him  as  a 
God-like  and  immortal  creature,  help  us  to  hold  the  same 
belief  as  to  the  common  crowds  of  men,  since  they  have  a 
common  nature  with  him. 

My  wish  on  the  present  occasion  is  to  illustrate  the  work- 
ing of  the  character  and  power  of  Channing  as  an  ideal  force 
in  the  life  of  America.  In  the  good  sense  of  the  words, 
what  is  an  ideal  force  .^  Any  influence  acting  through  our 
intelligence  and  sensibility  to  purify,  free,  and  ennoble  us, 
to  expand,  enrich,  and  consecrate  us.  It  is  by  means  of 
ideal  forces  that  our  moral  education  is  secured,  that  our 
passions  and  sentiments  are  restrained,  impelled,  regulated. 
These  forces  are  of  several  distinct  varieties  and  ranks.  If 
we  glance  rapidly  at  their  definitions,  it  will  enable  us  to 
grasp  the  conclusion  which  I  am  to  establish. 

First  comes  perceptive  education,  or  the  Theoretic  Ideal. 
This  embodies  in  rules,  maxims,  exhortations,  the  average 
moral  perceptions  current  in  society,  the  standard  of  con- 
duct established  in  the  ordinary  acceptance  and  profession 
of  the  community.     The  power  of  these  precepts  as  incul- 


282  CllAXNINc;    CENTKNAKV. 

cau-ci  in  llic  himily,  llic  sclu)ol,  and  tlie  church,  is  not  very 
vivid  i)r  prt)f()inul.  This  is  usually  overrated  as  a  saving 
influence.  What  power  it  exerts  comes  chiefly  from  the 
personal  authority  of  revered  and  beloved  characters  asso- 
ciated with  the  precepts  in  the  memory  of  the  pulpit. 

Secondly,  we  find  operative  as  a  moulding  moral  force 
what  may  be  called  social  edjication,  or  the  Realistic  Ideal. 
This  is  the  action  on  the  individual  of  the  living  social  order 
around  him,  the  embodiment,  not  of  the  profession  of  a\er- 
age  mankind,  but  of  the  sincerest  and  strongest  passions. 
What  the  ruling  ruultitudes  environing  us  say  is  right  and 
desirable  has  some  influence  on  us  ;  but  what  they  demon- 
strate to  be  their  sovereign  convictions  and  desires,  by  actu- 
ally incarnating  them  in  their  daily  conduct,  this  influences 
us  far  more  deeply.  The  verbal  profession  of  society  en- 
thrones morality,  but  the  genuine  life  and  constant  struggle 
of  society  enthrone  self-seeking.  Therefore,  the  predomi- 
nant power  of  the  realistic  ideal,  worshipped  everywhere  in 
the  great  battle  of  the  world,  is  a  demoralizing  influence 
which  more  than  offsets  its  high  precepts. 

Thirdly,  we  come  to  irritative  education,  or  the  Inciting 
Ideal.  The  most  resolute  and  energetic  champions  in  the 
social  struggle,  who  surpass  their  competitors  in  the  fierce 
game  for  money,  position,  power,  reputation,  luxury,  stand 
out  conspicuously  as  the  objects  of  popular  admiration  and 
envy.  Their  examples  catch  the  attention  and  inflame  the 
ambitions  of  younger  aspirants,  and  thus  shape  their  desires 
and  direct  their  toils.  In  this  way,  the  actuals  of  men  of 
exceptional  success  become  the  ideals  of  the  men  of  medioc- 
rity. The  tendency  of  this  style  of  influence  is  more  evil 
than  good,  because  it  excites  still  further  passions  already 
too  intense. 

And  now  we  come  to  personal  education,  or  the  Divine 
Ideal.     There  are   men  who  extricate  themselves  from   the 


CELEBRATION    AT    CHICAGO.  283 

vortex  of  selfish  contentions,  and  consecrate  their  powers  to 
the  worship  of  God,  the  pursuit  of  truth,  the  cultivation  of 
beauty,  the  doing  of  good,  the  perfecting  of  their  own  souls 
and  experiences.  These  are  original  characters,  endowed 
with  direct  insight  into  the  highest  things,  subjects  of  a 
fresh  inspiration  from  the  Infinite  Spirit.  Exalted  by  the 
sacred  superiority  of  their  lives,  they  lift  the  gaze  of  meaner 
men  from  servile  tasks  and  perishable  interests,  and  enkin- 
dle in  them  moral  devotion  and  religious  aspiration.  Thus, 
in  turn,  the  actuals  of  these  sacred  types  of  humanity  be- 
come the  ideals  of  less  gifted  but  generous  and  susceptible 
natures.  The  mission  of  every  truly  great  man  or  original 
genius  who  appears  is,  by  setting  up  a  better  example,  to 
free  and  advance  other  men  out  of  their  bondage  to  the 
inferior  examples  which  were  established  in  honor  before 
him.  But  the  final  ideal  will  not  be  made  up  of  the  special 
actuals  of  any :  it  will  arise  from  a  consensus  of  the  true 
insights  and  aspirations  of  all,  harmonized  and  perfected  by 
history  and  criticism.  And  every  successive  instance  of 
pure  worth  and  genius  which  wins  public  recognition,  and 
is  crowned  with  general  applause,  makes  its  contribution 
toward  this  result. 

The  sweet  and  noble  countenance  of  Channing  has  long 
since  been  added  to  those  portraits  of  illustrious  men  with 
which  fame  sprinkles  history.  It  is  a  profound  gratification 
to  see  in  how  many  far  places  there  is  a  spontaneous  up- 
rising to  encircle  his  spotless  memory  with  a  garland  of 
cosmopolitan  praise  on  the  arrival  of  his  centennial  day. 
It  is  indeed  a  high  omen  of  good.  For  he  is,  perhaps,  the 
purest  instance  of  the  divine  type  of  man  that  has  appeared 
in  our  country.  He  is  pre-eminently  worthy  of  reverence 
and  love  and  study.  No  character  in  American  history  is 
fitter  to  be  lifted  up  for  popular  adoration  and  gratitude,  or 
worthier  to   be  commended    to   the   emulous   docility  of   the 


2."^4  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

using  i;cncialu)n.  lie  was  not  a  man  of  meteoric  mind,  set 
off  with  (.lazzliny;  attributes  which  challenge  approach  or 
rci>r()iluction  ;  l)ut  everything  in  his  genius  and  methods  is 
sober  and  clear  and  imitable  by  those  who,  appreciating  his 
worth,  desire  to  become  like  him.  By  calm,  patient,  hum- 
ble, severe  painstaking,  he  i)urified  himself  from  vices,  and 
built  virtues  into  his  character.  He  took  the  most  un- 
wearying care  in  the  formation  of  his  opinions,  to  help  out 
error,  prejudice,  and  extravagance,  and  to  render  them 
sound  and  proportionate.  He  cultivated  a  direct  personal 
consciousness  of  the  living  God,  whose  omnipresence  he 
realized  with  a  vivid  constancy  which  filled  him  with  author- 
itative sanctity  and  clothed  him  with  awe.  He  repudiated 
all  yokes  of  dead  usages,  every  form  of  unrightful  dictation, 
and  exemplified  a  liberty  as  sublime  as  his  faith.  And  there 
are  things  for  all  to  do  in  accordance  with  the  degrees  of 
their  ability. 

Channing  conceived  of  God  as  a  being  of  infinite  power, 
freedom,  consciousness,  wisdom,  love,  and  beneficence, 
whose  attributes  are  to  be  seen  in  fixed  revelation,  in  ma- 
terial nature,  and  to  be  recognized  in  perpetual  play  in  the 
free  spirit.  He  thought  of  himself  as  a  finite  filial  copy  of 
God,  and  destined  to  an  equal  eternity.  He  therefore  had 
an  overwhelming  self-respect,  which  forbade  him  to  wrong 
or  defile  his  own  being.  And  recognizing  with  intense 
clearness  in  all  his  fellow-men  incarnated  representatives  of 
God,  sympathetic  copies  of  himself,  he  w-as  irresistibly  im- 
pelled to  love  and  honor  and  serve  them.  He  did  not  live 
for  money,  ofifice,  power,  pleasure,  or  fame ;  but  he  lived 
sacredly  for  God,  humanity,  truth,  beauty,  good,  perfection, 
eternity,  resolutely  resisting  all  temptations  to  the  contrary, 
and  steadily  growing  more  calm,  wise,  holy,  useful,  blessed, 
commanding,  and  divine  to  the  very  last.  When  he  was  yet 
a  young  man,  he  said,  "  I  practise  temperance,  and  strive  for 


CELEBRATION    AT    CHICAGO.  285 

purity  of  heart,  that  I  may  become  a  temple  for  the  spirit  of 
God  to  dwell  in."  And,  while  the  radiance  of  the  setting 
sun  was  answered  by  the  angelic  smile  on  his  dying  face,  he 
said,  "  I  have  received  many  messages  from  the  Spirit." 

Ay,  gild  his  name  with  new  honor.  Peruse  his  record 
with  fresh  interest.  His  example  will  work  as  an  ideal  force 
in  the  life  of  America  with  results  of  still  greater  reach  and 
beneficence,  just  as  our  people  fix  their  attention  upon  it 
with  the  spiritual  conditions  requisite  for  assimilating  its 
influence. 

And  I  must  add,  in  closing,  a  reason  of  the  strongest  ur- 
gency for  asking  the  attention  of  the  American  people  to 
the  life  and  spirit  of  Channing,  to  the  perfect  timeliness  and 
adaptation  of  his  thought  and  example  to  the  exigencies  of 
the  present  moment.  In  the  crisis  of  selfish  ambition  and 
materialism  through  which  we  are  passing,  the  experience 
and  authority  of  Channing  are  needed  as  a  counter- weight 
in  the  other  scale.  After  a  full  lifetime  of  supreme  devo- 
tion to  spiritual  themes,  he  affirmed  with  unhesitating  con- 
viction the  reality  of  God,  the  soul,  duty,  and  immortality. 
He  united  the  acumen  of  the  philosopher  and  the  vision  of 
the  seer.  After  the  long  consecration  of  his  deep  and  pure 
gifts,  his  matchless  spirituality  and  loyalty  to  truth,  he  had 
a  right  to  speak  and  a  claim  to  deferential  attention.  But 
his  single  assertion,  based  on  grounds  of  positive  perception, 
may  justly  outbalance  the  negative  reports  which  coarse 
and  unthinking  millions  of  observers  base  on  their  failure  to 
perceive. 

The  most  harmonized  and  competent  judges  are  invari- 
ably modest  and  expectant,  because  they  clearly  see  that 
the  known  is  petty,  the  unknown  immense.  Such  minds 
hold  that  those  who  affirm  from  a  positive  apprehension 
always  liave  an  iiicxpugnalile  achantagc  over  those  wlio 
merely  deny,   whether   from    emptiness    or   from   rebellion. 


286  ciiANNMNd  centi:naky. 

Indeed,  it  should  be  evident  to  every  trained  reasoner  that 
the  rejection,  on  the  mere  ignorant  ground  of  the  senses, 
of  the  truths  approved  by  the  spiritual  intuitions,  is  an  in- 
competent procedure.  I'^or  the  physical  facts,  which  are  all 
that  the  vulgarest  minds  perceive,  are  enveloped  in  mys- 
teries which  not  even  the  profoundest  thinkers  have  ever 
yet  explained.  The  eyes  translate  the  undulations  of  the 
ethereal  medium  into  light,  and  then  the  soul  uses  that  light 
to  discover  loveliness,  and  then  in  the  perception  of  that 
loveliness  thrills  with  ineffable  joy,  and  then  in  the  en- 
trancement  of  that  joy  recognizes  a  symbolic  revelation  of 
the  presence  of  God,  and  then  in  that  intuitive  fellowship 
with  God  finds  a  tacit  proof  of  its  own  immortal  destiny. 
And  I  will  put  one  such  positive'  declaration  of  a  conse- 
crated seer,  who  speaks  from  what  he  believes,  against  the 
hostile  declarations  of  a  wilderness  of  atheists  and  an  ocean 
of  infidels,  who  speak  only  from  what  they  do  not  believe. 
A  Hottentot  can  see  nothing  in  the  mathematical  calcula- 
tions of  Newton.  A  Patagonian  can  see  nothing  in  the 
musical  scores  of  Beethoven.  So  a  materialist,  looking  from 
over  the  solid  landscapes  of  the  earth  into  the  open  spaces 
of  faith,  gazing  on  the  blank  blue  of  the  infinite,  the  empty 
socket  whence  the  All-Seeing  Eye  has  winked  itself  out, 
can  perceive  nothing  in  the  great  formulas  of  the  religious 
believers  of  all  ages.  Nevertheless,  Newton  is  authority  in 
mathematics  against  the  Hottentot,  and  Beethoven  is  au- 
thority in  music  against  the  Patagonian.  Why  is  not  Chan- 
ning,  with  his  tremulous  and  divine  sensitiveness  to  the 
true  and  the  good,  equally  an  authority  in  religion,  as  against 
the  stolid  materialist }  m 

If  the  affirmations  of  the  believers  are  true,  it  places  these 
in  a  rank  of  superiority  to  the  unbelievers.  And  so  the 
latter  reverse  the  verdict,  and  give  themselves  the  suprem- 
acy, by  declaring  that  idealism  is  delusion   and  error,  that 


CELEBRATION    AT    CHICAGO.  28/ 

materialism  contains  the  whole  truth.  But  every  pure 
thinker  whose  intuitive  faculties  have  been  developed  and 
illuminated  knows  that  to  all  which  appears  in  outer  mani- 
testation  to  the  senses,  the  entire  material  universe  is  but 
a  series  of  transient  phenomena,  glimpsing  out  of  that  un- 
manifested  infinitude  of  real  being,  which  is  forever  hidden 
from  sense,  but  forever  open  to  reason  and  faith. 


Till-   CELEBRATION  AT  ST.  LOUIS. 


The  Missouri  Repuhlican  of  April  8  contains  the  following 
account  of  the  celebration  at  St.  Louis  :  — 

The  services  commemorative  of  the  centenary  birthday  of 
William  Ellery  Channing  were  held  last  evening  in  the  new 
hall,  corner  of  Jefferson  and  Washington  Avenues,  and  were 
honored  with  an  audience  worthy  of  the  occasion.  Rev. 
John  Snyder,  of  the  Church  of  the  Messiah,  Dr.  William 
G.  Eliot,  and  Mr.  Wayman  Crow  were  the  committee  in 
charge  of  the  arrangements  for  the  celebration. 

The  new  hall  had  been  especially  placed  in  order  for  the 
occasion,  the  interior  decorations  not  being  fully  completed. 
The  platform  was  handsomely  dressed  with  flowering  and 
foliage  plants ;  and  upon  the  wall  over  the  stage  was  a  large 
evergreen  shield  with  a  silver  monogram  "  C  "  in  the  centre, 
the  figures  "i  780-1 880"  being  conspicuously  displayed  at 
either  side  of  the  shield. 

The  exercises  opened  with  singing  by  the  choir  of  the 
Church  of  the  Messiah.  A  short  prayer  was  offered  by 
Mr.  Snyder,  followed  by  singing  by  the  choir.  Mr.  Snyder 
then  came  forward,  and  said  it  was  always  a  work  of  super- 
erogation for  a  writer  to  put  in  the  preface  what  was  to  ap- 
pear in  the  body  of  his  book ;  and  it  would  be  equally  so  for 


CELEBRATION    AT    ST.    LOUIS.  289 

him  to  explain  at  any  length  the  object  of  the  meeting.  He 
would  merely  say  that  they  had  met  to  honor  the  memory 
of  William  Ellery  Channing,  one  of  the  noblest  and  greatest 
men  known  to  the  nineteenth  century,  and  leave  it  to  the 
other  speakers  who  were  present  to  tell  the  story  in  detail. 
He  then  introduced,  as  the  first  speaker.  Rev.  John  C. 
Learned.  Mr.  Learned  was  called  upon  for  a  biographical 
sketch  of  Dr.  Channing.  The  speaker  called  attention  to 
the  difficulty  attending  an  effort  to  put  a  sixty-two  year 
biography  into  a  ten  or  twelve  minute  sketch,  but  went  on 
to  say  that  Dr.  Channing  was  born  April  7,  1780,  a  time 
when  Wordsworth  and  Napoleon  I.  were  youngsters  of  ten 
years,  and  Coleridge  was  eight.  Dr.  Channing  was  well 
connected,  and  had  advantages  for  developing  his  natural 
talents.  His  father  was  a  graduate  of  Harvard,  and  was 
a  man  held  in  high  esteem  among  his  fellows.  The  sub- 
ject of  the  sketch  was  given  an  excellent  home  training, 
and  among  other  things  was  thoroughly  grounded  in  the 
catechism.  His  mother  was  not  only  a  woman  of  marked 
originality  of  mind,  but  was  possessed  of  the  most  undevi- 
ating  rectitude.  His  father  died,  leaving  him  at  the  age  of 
twelve  just  preparing  for  college.  At  that  time,  Newport 
was  becoming  a  fashionable  place,  as  it  has  since  remained. 
British  and  French  officers  and  Southerners  visited  it  in 
great  numbers,  and  the  peculiar  ideas  they  brought  with 
them  had  their  effect  on  society.  France  was  then  in  a 
state  approaching  anarchy ;  and,  amid  all  the  exciting  polit- 
ical doctrines  discussed,  there  had  also  begun  to  appear  open 
attacks  on  the  doctrines  of  Puritanism.  At  such  a  time,  an 
active  mind  found  a  ready  field  for  employment.  Chan- 
ning, though  connected  with  various  societies  at  college, 
would  never  indulge  in  wine.  He  stood  well  in  his  classes, 
but  excelled  chiefly  in  composition,  attaining  rare  elegance 
as  a  writer.  On  leaving  college,  he  went  to  Richmond  as 
20 


290  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

a  tutor  in  a  private  family,  remaining  a  year  and  a  half. 
This  time  proved  most  eventful  to  him  in  the  matter  of 
shaping  his  career.  He  came  in  close  contact  with  slavery, 
and  formed  his  estimate  of  it.  At  the  same  time,  from  his 
study  of  the  French  situation  and  troubles,  he  developed 
his  views  on  war.  He  made  this  year  and  a  half  a  time 
of  such  incessant  and  hard  study  as  almost  to  break  him- 
self down,  and  in  fact  did  sow  the  seeds  of  disease  which 
kept  him  ever  after  in  frail  health.  It  was  during  this  time 
that  he  read  Rousseau  and  other  authors,  who  did  so  much 
toward  developing  his  mind.  Then  it  was  that  he  decided 
upon  the  study  of  divinity,  and  he  began  with  a  most 
e.xhaustive  examination  into  the  evidences  of  Christianity. 
He  began  to  preach  in  1802  in  Boston.  Crowds  thronged 
to  hear  him  almost  from  the  first.  He  was  never  a  secta- 
rian. He  always  refused  to  lead  or  be  led  by  a  party.  He 
wanted  all  to  be  as  free  in  thought  as  himself.  His  advice 
was  not  to  unite  with  any  church,  if  required  to  subscribe 
to  any  principle  the  truth  of  which  did  not  appear  beyond 
doubt.  He  was  thirty-four  years  old  when  he  married.  He 
went  to  Europe  in  1822,  and  there  met  some  of  the  great 
thinkers,  in  whose  writings  he  had  long  taken  delight.  At 
the  age  of  forty-four,  he  had  to  have  a  colleague  to  lighten 
his  labor,  being  no  longer  able  to  bear  the  fatigue  ;  yet, 
his  active  mind  obtained  no  rest.  His  idea  of  freedom  went 
out  to  all  mankind.  He  was  the  father  of  New  England 
Transcendentalism.  He  left  Boston  in  1842,  and  went  to 
Bennington,  where  he  was  taken  with  typhoid  fever.  Sun- 
day, the  2d  of  October,  they  read  him  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  and  the  Lord's  Prayer,  after  which  he  turned,  and,  ^ 
looking  out  upon  the  mountains  he  loved  so  well,  his  body 
fell  asleep,  and  no  one  knew  when  the  spirit  departed 
from  it. 

Dr.  Eliot  was  introduced  as  the  next  speaker.     He  said 


CELEBRATION    AT    ST.    LOUIS.  29I 

he  desired  to  ask  why  should  this  Channing  memorial  sec- 
vice  be  held.  Such  services  were  being  held  by  Christians, 
scholars,  and  philosophers  everywhere  in  the  civilized  world 
from  England  to  India,  and  all  over  the  United  States  ;  yet 
Dr.  Channing  was  a  quiet,  retiring  man,  not  distinguished 
for  great  learning.  He  was  not  a  popular  man,  nor  the 
leader  of  a  party  ;  yet  his  works  were  now  read  most  ex- 
tensively. Recently,  an  edition  of  one  hundred  thousand 
copies  of  his  writings  was  sold  in  England.  At  the  pres- 
ent day,  so  long  after  his  death,  he  was  more  honored  than 
ever.  This  was  because  of  his  earnest  and  sincere  con- 
victions. He  planted  himself  firmly  on  the  principles  of 
Christianity,  and  dared  to  apply  the  doctrines  of  religion  to 
his  daily  life.  He  was  now  spoken  of  as  the  apostle  of  lib- 
erty,—  the  liberty  of  a  lover  of  truth  and  a  servant  of  God, 
—  one  who  held  to  the  justice  of  law.  He  was  not  a  will- 
ing iconoclast.  It  was  painful  to  him  to  break  down  old 
customs.  He  was  the  same  all  the  time,  alone  or  with  the 
multitude.  In  quiet  gentleness,  he  received  the  new  light, 
and  caused  it  to  shine  on  all  around.  He  could  never  dis- 
cover any  conflict  between  science  and  revelation.  True 
science  he  held  to  be  essentially  religious.  The  speaker 
quoted  several  passages  from  Dr.  Channing's  sermons,  illus- 
trating his  views.  He  was  a  man  of  stern,  unbending  in- 
tegrity, and  under  no  circumstances  was  he  ever  known  to 
strengthen  his  argument  by  unfair  treatment  of  an  oppo- 
nent. In  his  first  work  on  slavery,  he  declared  that  if  a 
work,  no  matter  how  good,  could  not  be  carried  out  by  the 
benevolent  workings  of  Christianity,  then  the  time  for  do- 
ing had  not  arrived.  He  held  that  the  first  object  of  zeal 
was  not  to  prosper,  but  to  do  right. 

Judge  McCrary  was  the  next  speaker.  He  said  it  was 
always  a  healthful  thing  to  study  the  lives  and  commemorate 
the  virtues  of  the  great  and  good  men  of  the  past,  because 


292  CHANNINU;    CM'.NTP.NAKY. 

the  more  these  were  dwelt  upon  and  the  more  familiar  they 
became,  the  more  the  men  of  tQ-day  would  be  led  to  imitate 
thorn.  Consciously  or  unconsciously,  the  speaker  supposed, 
all  men  had  their  saints  and  ideals  ;  and  it  was  of  great 
moment  whether  their  ideals  were  high  or  low,  such  as  to 
lift  up  or  drag  down.  In  this,  he  believed,  was  the  true 
secret  of  the.  hold  the  Christian  religion  had  obtained, 
because  by  it  the  perfect  character  of  Christ  was  continually 
held  up  before  the  people.  On  this  occasion,  there  was  held 
up  a  life  affording  an  example  as  perfect,  a  model  as  uplift- 
ing, as  could  be  found  among  all  the  great  men  of  America. 
It  was  an  example  of  honesty,  not  only  with  his  fellow-men, 
but  also  with  his  own  conscience.  Holding  clear  convic- 
tions, he  uttered  them  without  fear  and  in  the  face  of  oppo- 
sition, sometimes  amounting  to  persecution.  He  was  the 
apostle  of  freedom  of  thought,  and  at  the  same  time  the 
peaceful  teacher  of  Christianity.  He  never  held  his  peace 
when  he  felt  it  his  duty  to  speak.  He  was  also  an  example 
of  catholicity.  His  writings  would  be  searched  in  vain  for 
any  expression  of  unkindness  toward  those  who  differed 
from  the  views  he  held.  With  him,  it  meant  liberty  of 
thought  .on  all  subjects,  but  especially  religion.  It  had 
fallen  to  the  lot  of  but  few  to  impress  their  thoughts  on  the 
world  as  Dr.  Channing  had  done.  To-day,  that  broad  catho- 
licity which  he  preached  in  the  face  of  such  violent  opposi- 
tion is  preached  from  thousands  of  pulpits.  His  theology 
permeated  the  thoughts  of  men  as  did  Jefferson's  political 
views.  He  proclaimed  a  declaration  of  religious  independ- 
ence founded,  as  Jefferson's  declaration  was,  on  the  dignity 
of  human  nature.  He  believed  man  was  fit  to  exercise  his 
own  judgment.  Though  he  belonged  to  the  Unitarian 
denomination,  he  really  belonged  rather  to  the  world.  He 
did  not  believe  that  all  good  could  be  found  in  any  one 
denomination,  and  he  found  brethren  in  all  denominations 


CELEBRATION   AT    ST.    LOUIS.  293 

and  outside  of  all  denominations.  The  speaker  was  glad 
the  memory  of  Dr.  Channing  was  so  widely  celebrated.  It 
would  be  good  for  the  world  that  this  great  and  pure  charac- 
ter should  be  held  up  as  an  example,  and  emulated. 

"  I  will  now  introduce  to  you  a  gentleman  from  another 
room  of  the  family  household,"  said  Mr.  Snyder.  "In  my 
Father's  house  there  are  many  mansions,"  quoted  the  clergy- 
man, as  he  introduced  Rev.  Joseph  H.  Foy,  pastor  of  the 
Central  Christian  Church. 

Mr.  Foy  said  he  esteemed  it  an  honor  and  a  privilege  to 
speak  a  word  of  honest  eulogy  to  one  who  was  a  living  force, 
he  had  almost  said  a  living  presence,  in  their  lives.  Being  a 
member  of  a  church  which  held  some  tenets  totally  at  vari- 
ance with  those  grandly  advocated  by  Dr.  Channing, '  he 
could  not  be  accused  of  bias  in  the  favorable  judgments 
he  had  soberly  formed  and  would  candidly  express.  The 
speaker  formed  his  opinions  from  no  memoirs  nor  laudatory 
biographies  ;  yet  he  knew  as  much  of  the  man  from  a  study 
of  his  works  as  any  one  living  or  dead.  The  incertitude 
in  respect  to  doubtful  men,  like  Byron,  Napoleon  I.,  Fred- 
erick the  Great,  or  Thomas  Paine,  drove  one  to  investi- 
gation ;  but  he  was  so  certain  of  Channing's  truth,  good- 
ness, and  purity,  that  he  would  as  soon  have  investigated 
the  genealogy  of  an  angel  as  to  distrustfully  scrutinize  the 
personal  character  of  this  almost  inspired  proclaimer  of  the 
"fatherhood  of  God"  and  the  "brotherhood  of  man."  His 
comprehensive  and  philosophic  mind,  his  almost  divine  ten- 
derness, his  devotion  to  truth  and  principle,  that  raised  him 
above  the  earthly  plane,  made  a  profound  impression  upon 
the  speaker.  He  had  dawned  upon  the  lecturer  in  his  works 
as  a  gentle,  princely  man,  thoroughly  human,  yet  moving  in 
a  large  orbit  around  the  central  sun.  He  took  hold  of  him 
as  a  man  of  profound  mind,  unalterable  convictions  upon  all 
questions  of  right  and  wrong,  justice  or  injustice,  of  quick 


294  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

sympathies  with  the  down-trodden  everywhere.  He  grew 
upon  him  as  a  man  who,  though  not  having  learned  evil 
from  sad  experience,  could,  by  the  sympathy  of  a  common 
nature,  enter  heartily  into  plans  for  the  recovery  of  man, 
and  his  restoration  to  that  dignity  which  was  his  birthright. 
Of  all  the  sons  of  men  who  had,  in  imitation  of  the  Blessed 
One,  "gone  about  doing  good,"  there  was  none  whose  name 
was  worthier  of  perpetual  embalmment  in  the  considerate 
regard  and  tender  affection  of  all  succeeding  generations 
than  Channing's.  No  biographic  praise  or  silver  voice  of 
oratory  could  give  their  souls  a  tenderer  veneration  than 
they  had  for  the  one  who  labored  that  "every  wrong,  injus- 
tice, and  oppression  in  the  world  might  cease  to  be."  The 
deathless  truths  from  Channing's  majestic  brain  were  among 
his  most  treasured  possessions.  Though  bigotry  and  preju- 
dice blinded  hundreds  as  to  the  value  of  Channing's  works 
and  their  marvellous  influence  upon  modern  thought,  they 
are  nevertheless  gradually  finding  their  way  into  every 
thoughtful  preacher's  library.  He  had  spoken  to  a  number 
of  ministers  of  his  own  Church  upon  the  subject,  and  he 
could  not  recall  one  who  did  not  possess  these  works.  His 
own  copy  was  so  marked  up  as  to  be  almost  a  curiosity. 
Mr.  Foy  paid  an  eloquent  tribute  to  the  man  who  had  taught 
by  precept  and  example  that  "truth  only  endures,"  who  had 
been  an  instrument  in  God's  hand  to  remove  distressful 
doubts,  who  taught  the  "  rational  character  of  the  Christian 
religion,"  and  who  brushed  away  any  doubts  as  to  "immor- 
tality "  and  "future  life."  Campbell,  Fletcher,  Flavel,  New- 
man, Marvin,  Alexander,  Hall,  Channing,  and  Dewey,  were 
sources  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  sustenance  to  him.  The 
speaker  referred  in  glowing  terms  to  Mr.  Channing's  absorb- 
ing interest  in  the  elevation  of  the  laboring  classes,  and 
asserted  that  his  essay  on  "Sunday-schools"  gave  him  a 
better  idea  of  the  importance  of  this  department  than   all 


CELEBRATION    AT    ST.    LOUIS.  295 

Other  essays  or  speeches  he  had  ever  read  or  heard  put 
together.  The  same  applied  to  his  "Address  upon  Temper- 
ance." Channing's  "  Discourses  on  War"  were  the  founda- 
tion of  the  modern  peace  societies.  His  "Essays  on  Sla- 
very," coming  as  they  did  at  a  time  when  discussion  was 
intemperate  and  the  State  itself  in  peril,  swept  everything 
before  them  by  their  irresistible  logic.  The  cathedral  bells 
of  the  Catholic  church  in  Boston  were  tolled,  it  is  said,  by 
order  of  Bishop  Cheverous,  when  Channing  died.  "  All  his 
ends  were  his  country's,  his  God's,  and  truth's."  Already, 
great  foreign  academies  had  accorded  prizes  for  the  best 
discriminative  analyses  of  the  man  and  his  works.  The 
speaker  concluded  with  these  words :  "  As  the  chilling 
snows  of  bigotry,  once  piled  high  and  hard  upon  the  bleak 
peaks  of  prejudice,  melt  and  disappear  before  the  sun  of 
enlightened  Christian  liberalism  slowly  climbing  toward  the 
zenith,  the  overflowing  Nile  of  William  Ellery  Channing's 
influence  will  deepen,  rise,  and  widen,  carrying  refreshment, 
strength,  and  joy  beyond  measure,  to  parched  hearts,  bowed 
heads,  and  drooping  spirits,  in  all  the  coming  ages." 

Mr.  Snyder  said,  upon  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  Foy's  re- 
marks, that  it  was  difficult  to  tell  whether  he  belonged  to 
their  church  or  they  to  his,  but  he  supposed  they  belonged 
to  each  other.  He  then  introduced  Hon.  George  Partridge, 
who,  he  said,  had  sat  in  the  choir  of  Dr.  Channing's  church 
and  listened  to  him  preach. 

Mr.  Partridge  said,  although  he  had  been  a  member  of  a 
quartette  in  Dr.  Channing's  church,  he  did  not  intend  to 
speak  of  that.  He  referred  particularly  to  Channing's  sym- 
pathy with  humanity.  He  never  received  a  salary  of  more 
than  $1,600  a  year,  and  began  at  $1,200.  He  gave  half  of 
this  away  to  the  poor  members  of  his  church.  No  one  went 
away  from  the  church  without  thinking  over  what  he  had 
heard,  and  would   probably  pray  when   he  got    home.     His 


296  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

gentle,  soft  voice  impressed  the  listener  as  if  he  was  above 
humanity,  yet  he  was  always  with  them.  These  impres- 
sions of  the  man  were  still  strong  within  the  speaker,  and 
would  ever  remain  with  him. 

Rev.  Samuel  Young,  an  Episcopalian  minister  of  Canada, 
staying  in  the  city  for  a  few  days,  was  introduced  as  another 
member  of  the  common  household.  The  English,  he  said, 
were  like  Moses,  and  possessed  many  virtues ;  but  they 
needed  the  help  of  an  Aaron,  or  Americans  with  their  silver 
tongues  and  ready  utterances.  He  was  not  an  off-hand 
speaker.  People  could  be  divided  into  two  classes :  first, 
the  supporters  of  ecclcsiasticism  ;  and,  secondly,  those  who 
thought  themselves  privileged  in  their  conceit  to  say,  "  Or- 
thodo.xy  is  mine,  heterodoxy  and  all  other  doxies  are  yours." 
The  speaker  believed  in  the  royal  supremacy  of  reason.  He 
believed  in  exercising  reason  in  regard  to  supposed  reve- 
lation. His  religion  circled  around  the  trinity  of  God, 
Channing's  about  the  humanity  of  Christ.  If  they  would 
turn  their  heads  toward  the  front  and  not  look  behind,  the 
lines  would  almost  converge,  and  there  would  be  but  little 
difference. 

In  a  few  appropriate  words,  Mr.  Snyder  introduced  Rev. 
Dr.  Boyd,  pastor  of  the  Second  Baptist  Church,  who  said  :  — 

It  were  impossible  for  me,  after  the  exhaustive  and  elo- 
quent addresses  which  have  been  delivered,  to  enrich  the 
thought  or  add  to  the  interest  of  this  occasion  ;  but  I  cannot 
withhold  my  simple,  grateful  tribute  to  the  memory  of  a  man 
with  whose  generous  Christian  spirit  I  am  in  full  sympathy, 
and  to  whom  I  owe  so  much  in  the  matter  and  manner  of 
my  thinking.  Sure  I  am  that  this  centenary  memorial  is 
in  accord  with  the  apostolic  injunction,  "  Honor  to  whom 
honor  is  due,  tribute  to  whom  tribute." 

The  estimate  in  which  I  hold  the  life  and  character  of 
William  Ellery  Channing  has  been   formed,   not  from  bio- 


CELEBRATION    AT    ST.    LOUIS.  29/ 

graphical  sketches,  but  from  the  six  volumes  of  his  published 
writings  (put  into  my  library  by  the  kind  thoughtfulness  of 
a  friend  in  Boston),  which  I  have  read  and  reread  with  ever- 
increasing  interest  and  profit. 

Dr.  Channing's  own  language  is  the  key  to  his  character : 
"  Men  are  distinguished  from  one  another  not  merely  by 
difference  of  thoughts,  but  often  more  by  the  different  de- 
grees of  relief  or  prominence  which  they  give  to  the  same 
thoughts."  The  greatness  of  Dr.  Channing's  soul  is  seen  in 
the  intensity  of  the  feelings  and  thoughts  which  predomi- 
nate in  his  writings.  His  conception  of  the  dignity  of  man, 
though  conceding  the  "  weakness  and  limitations  of  man's 
present  development  and  the  moral  degradation  that  sin  has 
wrought,  yet  reveals  the  capabilities  of  the  race  and  the 
grand  future  which  God  has  in  store  for  it."  "  God's  sov- 
ereignty is  limitless,"  he  says,  "still  man  has  rights.  God's 
power  is  irresistible,  still  man  is  free.  On  God  we  entirely 
depend  ;  yet  we  can  and  do  act  from  ourselves,  and  deter- 
mine our  own  characters."  On  the  union  of  the  infinite  and 
the  finite,  not  on  their  contrast  or  opposition,  Dr.  Channing 
founded  all  hope  of  ameliorating  man's  condition.  In  this 
union,  he  recognized  an  escape  from  both  pantheism  and 
fatalism.  Here  were  the  hidden  springs  of  all  social  order 
and  reform.  From  this  conception  of  man's  nature  and  pos- 
sibilities sprung  his  profound  reverence  for  liberty,  his 
earnest  advocacy  of  human  rights,  his  love  for  the  poor,  his 
appeals  for  the  laboring  classes,  and  his  active  opposition 
to  slavery,  war,  intemperance,  and  every  form  of  mental  op- 
pression. 

J^elieving  most  sincerely  and  broadly  in  the  fatherhood  of 
God  and  the  brotherhood  of  man,  he  gave  utterance  to  the 
purest  religious  sentiments  concerning  God,  Christ,  duty, 
self-culture,  immortality. 

Rarely  in   the   history  of  the  race  do   we  meet  with  one 


298  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

who  combines  in  such  grace  and  symmetry  the  claims  to 
hi<;h  renown.  His  essays,  especially  those  on  Milton,  Napo- 
leon Bonaparte,  and  Fenelon,  full  of  research,  of  profound 
insii^ht  into  human  nature,  of  critical  and  well-balanced 
judi^ments  exjjressed  in  "burning  words  that  clothe  the 
God-breathed  thoughts."  reveal  the  ripe  scholar.  His  dis- 
sertations on  the  "evidences  of  revealed  religion,"  "the 
imitableness  of  Christ's  character,"  and  on  many  devotional 
themes,  bring  us  face  to  face  with  the  large-hearted  and  yet 
incisive  theologian.  His  exact  and  comprehensive  views  on 
the  subtile  influences  of  society  constantly  in  exercise  to  rob 
us  of  our  individuality  show  that  independence  of  mind 
which  made  him  a  prince  of  reformers. 

There  is  nothing  which  the  world  resents  so  much  as  an 
attempt  to  carry  out  a  better  measure  than  existed  before. 
The  world  never  lets  a  man  bless  it,  but  it  first  fights  him. 
But  the  criticisms  evoked  by  Dr.  Channing's  labors  in  the 
interest  of  temperance,  of  education,  of  the  freedom  of  the 
slave,  and  of  the  higher  emancipation  of  the  intellect  and 
heart  from  the  thraldom  of  traditional  and  severe  theology, 
have  but  made  his  ideal  of  human  destiny  the  more  sublime 
and  his  charity  the  sweeter. 

Of  all  the  professions,  it  has  been  said  that  the  ecclesias- 
tical one  is  that  which  most  decidedly  and  most  constantly 
affects  the  judgments  of  persons  and  opinions;  ttiat  it  is 
peculiarly  difficult  for  a  clergyman  to  attain  disinterested- 
ness in  his  thinking,  to  accept  truth  just  as  it  may  happen 
to  present  itself,  without  passionately  desiring  that  one  doc- 
trine may  turn  out  to  be  strong  in  evidence  and  another 
unsupported.  But  disinterestedness  in  the  pursuit  of  truth 
was  Dr.  Channing's  pre-eminent  trait.  I  do  not  agree  with 
all  of  his  conclusions  in  theology,  but  I  do  most  sincerely 
admire  his  untiring  effort  to  attain  and  to  express  the  simple, 
scientific  truth.     He  never  writes  for  the  sake  of  argument, 


CELEBRATION    AT    ST.    LOUIS.  299 

even  in  the  heat  of  controversy :  it  is  light  and  truth  which 
his  spirit  yearns  for,  even  at  the  sacrifice  of  past  opinions 
and  preferences.  This  is  the  great  charm  of  his  character, 
and  this  it  is  that  makes  him  not  the  exclusive  possession 
of  one  denomination  or  time  or  country,  but  the  sainted 
teacher  of  all  Christians  for  all  time  the  world  over. 

Love  is  ownership.  We  share  in  the  work  of  all  the  great 
and  good  whom  we  reverence  along  the  centuries.  And  so 
I  claim  some  humble  share  of  Dr.  Channing  and  his  work, 
because  I  admire  his  Christian  character  and  revere  his 
memory.  He  is  not  dead.  He  lives  and  will  live  in  the 
heart  of  ages  so  long  as  men  honor  purity  of  life,  reverence 
truth,  and  love  liberty. 

Dr.  Eliot  stated  that  a  letter  had  been  received  from  Dr. 
Post,  regretting  his  inability  to  be  present,  and  expressing 
his  high  appreciation  of  the  character  of  Dr.  Channing.  A 
similar  letter  had  been  received  from  Rev.  Dr.  Nichols.  He 
referred  to  an  article  upon  Dr.  Channing,  published  in  the 
New  York  Evangelist,  and  said  nothing  could  be  more  cor- 
dial and  hearty.  He  spoke  in  favor  of  their  church  paying 
for  a  memorial  window  to  be  placed  in  the  memorial  church 
at  Newport.  The  meeting  closed  with  singing  the  doxology 
and  pronouncing  the  benediction. 


Tin-  ri'LI-BRATION  AT  ST.  PAUL 


The  St.  Paul  and  Minneapolis  Pioneer  Press  of  April  5  th 
gives  the  following  report  of  the  celebration  by  the  congre- 
gation of  Unity  Church,  St.  Paul:  — 

Yesterday  being  the  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth 
in  Newport,  R.I.,  of  Rev.  William  Ellery  Channing,  the  dis- 
tinguished Unitarian  divine,  the  event  was  appropriately 
celebrated  by  the  congregation  of  Unity  Church,  St.  Paul. 
There  was  an  unusually  large  and  intelligent  congregation 
present,  there  being  many  members  of  other  churches  in 
attendance.  Ifi  front  of  the  reading-desk  was  placed  a  large 
photograph,  copied  from  a  painting  of  the  subject  of  the 
day's  celebration,  to  which  allusion  was  made  in  the  dis- 
course. The  picture  was  elegantly  framed,  and  around  it 
were  entwined  smilax,  pansies,  and  roses,  while  a  bunch  of 
calla  lilies  overtopped  the  whole.  After  the  usual  devotional 
exercises.  Rev.  W.  C.  Gannett,  the  pastor  of  the  congrega- 
tion, delivered  the  following  eloquent  sermon  :  — 

I  desire  to  do  two  things, —  in  three  or  four  quick  pictures 
to  show  you  Channing  coming  to  himself,  and  then  to  show 
you  Channing  in  relation  to  the  so-called  Unitarian  move- 
ment ;  and  this  is  all.  Next  Sunday,  I  hope  to  speak  of  that 
which  Channing  himself  has  called  "  my  one  sublime  idea," — 


CELEBRATION    AT    ST.    PAUL.  3OI 

that  idea  central  to  all  that  he  thought  or  spoke  or  did  or 
was,  the  idea  for  which  his  name  stands  in  the  world  of 
churches.  Alread}^  I  have  spoken  once,  in  preparation  for 
to-day,  of  the  general  gain  in  religious  liberty  made  during 
this  century  since  Channing's  birth.  Three  Sundays  are 
none  too  many  for  the  great  themes  connected  with  his 
memory.  And  perhaps  to-day  you  will  allow  me  to  claim  a 
little  more  of  your  time  than  usual. 

The  first  picture  takes  us  to  the  ancient,  dingy,  dreamy 
town  of  Newport  in  Rhode  Island.  The  time- is  the  middle 
of  the  war  of  revolution,  1780.  The  blackened  ruins  of  sev- 
eral hundred  houses  show  that  the  British  troops  have  just 
left  the  place.  A  drowsy  old  town  even  then,  where  people 
lived  long,  they  lived  so  quietly.  Sundry  nonagenarians, 
white  and  black,  are  in  its  chimney-corners.  It  is  the  town 
of  the  famous  old  "  Stone  Mill,"  which  nobody  remembered 
being  built,  and  which  was  therefore  referred  to  the  North- 
men of  eight  hundred  years  before.  Queer  characters, 
strong  characters,  abound ;  for  it  is  a  seaport  and  a  capital, 
and  a  place  of  families  with  wealth  and  refinement.  It  might 
be  called  too  the  "  slave-market  "  of  the  Northern  colonies. 
The  pavement  in  the  main  street  was  paid  for  by  a  town  tax 
upon  the  Africans  imported  ;  and  it  was  quite  the  thing  to 
do  for  even  a  thrifty  minister  to  send  his  venture  to  the 
coast  of  Guinea  in  the  ship  of  some  friendly  parishioner  to 
have  it  return  to  him  in  the  shape  of  a  likely  Guinea  boy. 

Here  the  little  child  was  born  whom  his  parents  chris- 
tened William  EUery  Channing.  The  I'-llery  was  for  his 
grandfather,  who  had  just  been  signing  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.  The  father  was  a  genial  lawyer,  much  be- 
loved by  friends ;  the  mother,  a  small,  straight,  elastic, 
bright-eyed  lady,  who  looked  alert  and  self-reliant,  kindly 
and  yet  blunt.  That  last  she  was,  sharp-witted,  plain- 
spoken, —  with  a  ready  frown  for  any  kind  of  vsham, —  truth- 


302  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

telling,  trulh-dcaling,  truth-exacting.  If  the  man  who  was 
her  boy  had  one  trait  above  others,  it  was  truthfuhicss. 
That  mother  gave  it  to  him.  He  was  a  little,  straight,  quick 
lad.  like  the  mother  again  in  this,  fond  of  racing,  climbing, 
wrestling.  Very  tender-hearted,  he  let  the  rats  out  of  the 
trap,  and  could  not  bear  a  deed  of  cruelty;  indeed,  was  ready 
for  a  fight  to  defend  boys  smaller  than  himself.  A  generous, 
chivalric  child,  then  ;  thoughtful,  too.  As  a  five  or  six  years' 
youngster,  the  playmates  called  him  "little  minister";  for  he 
used  to  take  texts  and  preach  nursery  sermons,  and  summon 
the  household  by  beating  on  the  warming-pan.  A  little 
older,  his  name  was  "  little  peace-maker."  A  little  older  yet, 
and  we  hear  of  his  fondness  for  long,  lonely  rambles  about 
the  beautiful'  island  shores.  Of  course,  he  was  brought  up 
to  go  to  church  and  say  the  Westminster  Catechism. 

Now  we  change  the  picture,  and  get  a  glimpse  of  Harvard 
College  life.  He  is  but  fourteen  when  he  goes  there,  now  a 
fatherless  boy  ;  and  the  mother,  left  poor,  can  ill  spare  the 
little  that  a  college  education  cost.  Cost  what  it  would, 
William  must  have  it.  No  famous  scholar,  but  a  good  one, 
especially  his  translations,  and  very  fond  of  history  and 
moral  science.  Fast  deepening  now,  growing  more  solemn 
and  yet  more  enthusiastic,  as  college  boys  are  apt  to  after 
Sophomore  year  is  gone  and  they  begin  to  hear  the  noise  of 
the  great  world  at  the  gates  of  manhood.  One  day  in  college 
life,  the  very  place  and  hour,  the  very  tree  under  which  the 
experience  occurred,  the  very  chapter  of  the  book  that  kin- 
dled the  experience,  he  remembered  all  his  life  as  the  hour, 
tree,  book,  of  his  "  new  birth,"  when  a  glowing  vision  of  the 
majesty  of  rectitude  and  the  beauty  of  holiness  broke  upon 
his  soul. 

Now  change  the  scene  to  Richmond,  Va.,  whither  he  went, 
college  days  over,  to  teach  in  a  rich  Southerner's  family.  If 
in  college  he  had  had  his   "call,"   now  he  had  his  "forty 


CELEBRATION    AT    ST.    PAUI-.  3O3 

days  "  of  trial  in  the  desert.  But  the  days  were  twenty 
months, —  days  of  inward  tumult  and  outward  self-discipline, 
days  of  poverty,  of  sleep  upon  the  floor,  of  stoical  exercises 
to  "  harden  himself,"  days  of  reverie  and  sentimental  long- 
ings for  he  knew  not  what ;  yet  ever  of  self-watching  and 
self-correction,  that  brought  him  nearer  to  the  discovery  of 
the  purpose  of  his  life.  Finally,  he  reached  it ;  and  again 
we  hear  dimly  through  the  hints  of  a  biographer,  who  says 
the  record  is  one  of  those  too  intricate  to  be  given  to  the 
world  even  after  death, —  again  we  hear  of  an  hour  of  very 
intense  and  solemn  consecration,  a  giving  himself  heart,  soul, 
mind,  strength,  to  God  for  life. 

It  is  said  by  friends  and  critics  that  Channing  never  knew 
the  agonies  of  inward  conflict,  never  in  his  own  experience 
glanced  down  into  the  chasms  of  sin,  and  slowly  and  with 
stumbles  climbed  the  heights  of  the  repentance  that  most 
men  have  to  climb,  and  therefore  was  not  fitted  to  know 
much  about  "sin"  and  the  degradation  of  poor  human 
nature.  I  doubt  it  much.  I  doubt  much  whether  those 
whom  the  world  calls  saints,  and  who  are  saints  and  inno- 
cent from  the  great  transgression  common  enough  to  most 
of  us,  do  not  perhaps  know  more  about  such  falls  and  strug- 
gles than  even  we.  They  fall  upon  a  higher  plane,  but  it  is 
worse  to  fall  upon  a  higher  plane  ;  and  it  is  upon  the  edge 
of  the  heights  that  one  best  knows  the  sense  of  depths.  At 
all  events,  this  much  is  true  of  Channing,  that  something  in 
Richmond,  and  it  was  inward  experience  largely,  so  took  hold 
of  him  that  he  who  went  there  a  young  fellow  buoyant  with 
health  came  back  to  be  for  life  a  thin  and  pallid  invalid, — 
came  back  scarcely  to  know  henceforth  a  day  free  from  lassi- 
tude and  pain.  Even  his  native  town,  to  which  he  now 
returned,  with  its  quiet  for  study  and  its  wonderful  shores, 
and  its  beach,  of  which  he  said  in  after  life,  "  No  spot  on 
earth  has  so  helped  to  form  me  as  that  beach," — even  that 


304  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

failed  to  restore  him.  He  himself  tells  us,  "  My  body  pined 
away  to  a  shado-w  there,  under  the  workings  of  a  troubled 
mind."  I  suspect  that  Channing  had  some  of  the  experi- 
ences which  most  men  have,  and  christen  "sin." 

And  now  we  must  follow  him  to  Boston,  where,  as  young 
pastor,  the  lad  scarce  twenty-three  was  settled  over  the 
Federal  Street  Church,  in  1803.  The  beginning,  of  Chan- 
ning's  ministry  !  As  we  look  at  that  beautiful  face  before 
us,  chastened,  disciplined,  sensitive,  yearning,  it  seems  like 
an  open  book,  written,  though  in  some  language  of  the 
spirit,  to  tell  us  what  a  "minister's"  life  may  be, — -"min- 
ister," "  servant "  of  mankind.  And  now  we  see  him 
beginning  that  life.  Let  me  quote  some  sentences  that 
show  us  his  conception"  of  such  a  life  :  "Nothing  calls  forth 
the  soul  like  a  consciousness  of  being  dedicated  to  a  sub- 
lime work,  in  which  illustrious  beings  are  our  associates, 
and  of  which  the  consequences  are  interminable."-  "The 
minister  is  a  fellow-worker  with  Christ  and  the  angels." 
"  For  true  eloquence,  there  is  but  one  preparation  :  it  is  to 
make  the  thought  of  spiritual  perfection,  of  God's  life  within 
the  soul,  real  to  ourselves  by  habitual  experience."  "The 
only  true  dignity  is  that  which  results  from  proposing 
habitually  a  lofty  standard  of  feeling  and  action."  "Power 
and  majesty  belong  to  him  who  yields  himself  up  in  willing 
obedience  to  the  rectitude  of  God."  "  The  preacher  has  to 
penetrate  men  with  great  convictions."  "  No  man  is  fitted 
to  preach  or  promote  Christianity  who  is  not  fitted  to  die 
for  it."  Listen  again  to  these,  his  definition  of  essences  : 
"The  essence  of  Christianity  is  a  spirit  of  martyrdom  in 
the  cause  of  mankind."  "  Religion  means  the  adoration  and 
imitation  of  the  perfections  of  God."  "Is  not  faith  in  the 
perfect  love  of  God,  the  knowledge  of  him  as  infinite  good- 
ness, the  grand,  commanding,  central  view.''  This  God  as 
having  no  other  end  in  creation  than  to  communicate  his 


CELEBRATION    AT    ST.    PAUL.  305 

own  life  to  his  children."  "This  correspondence  of  the 
soul  to  God,  this  principle  of  virtue  or  inward  law  impelling 
to  unbounded  progress,  I  consider  as  the  very  essence  of 
human  nature." 

I  do  not  mean  that  all  these  great  sentences  came  into 
his  first  sermon  or  out  of  his  early  years ;  but  the  life  pur- 
pose, the  conception  of  the  ministry,  and,  in  not  very  vague 
germ,  the  conception  of  religion,  of  the  soul,  of  God,  which 
framed  these  scattered  sentences,  and  hundreds  like  them, 
was  in  the  early  years  and  sermons.  In  his  very  first 
sermon,  he  struck  the  key-note  of  the  long  life-anthem  when 
he  said,  "  We  glorify  God  when  by  imitation  we  display 
his  character."  A  commonplace, —  of  the  kind  of  common- 
places that  make  up  the  Sermon  of  the  Mount. 

What  wonder,  then,  that,  with  this  conception  of  his  work 
irradiating  him  from  the  outset,  he  should  make  what  is 
called  a  "  spiritual  impression".^  Add  to  his  face,  so  irra- 
diated, his  sweet  voice,  an  organ  of  wonderful  clearness, 
delicacy,  expansiveness,  as  those  who  recall  it  delight  to 
tell  us,  and  what  wonder  that  men  should  remember  as 
events  his  reading  of  certain  Bible  passages  and  certain 
hymns,  even  his  pronunciation  of  certain  words  .-*  A  sense 
of  the  Eternal  came  out  from  him,  even  in  those  days  of 
boyish  pulpit-work.  The  little  children  were  awed  by  it, 
and  remembered  it  to  tell  about  as  grown  men  and  women, 
—  how  they  caught  their  first  strong  impression  of  a  man 
at  worship  from  his  look  and  tone.  What  is  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing's mark  of  the  angel .''  She  uses  words  like  these,  "  You 
saw  by  his  eyes  that  they  had  looked  on  God."  That  seems 
to  have  been  true  of  the  young  preacher  of  Federal  Street. 
The  sermons  were  not  "great"  sermons.  Boston  was  re- 
garded as  a  sort  of  "  paradise  for  ministers  "  in  those  days  ; 
and  there  were  brilliant  preachers  in  the  city, —  notably, 
young   Buckminster.     But    Channing   would    scarcely   have 

21 


306  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

been  counted  among  them.  Indeed,  he  never  would  have 
been  called  a  "brilliant"  preacher.  His  style  is  "sunlight, 
not  lightning."  He  was  a  careful  pruner  of  all  superlatives, 
carefully  left  out  metaphors  and  illustrations,  almost  com- 
pletely abstained  from  quotation.  His  sermons  preach 
truthfulness,  whatever  the  subject  be, —  preach  the  utter 
disuse  of  all  trick,  all  exaggeration.  His  thought  habitu- 
ally was  on  such  high  themes  that  his  reverence  for  them 
made  unornamented  words  the  only  worthy  style.  "  I  come 
to  another  great  truth,"  he  was  apt  to  say  as  he  passed 
along  his  sermon.  "This  is  an  infinitely  important  truth." 
There  is  a  superlative,  to  be  sure.  He  kept  them  then,  sa- 
cred to  such  use.  Now,  all  this  makes  life-giving  sermons, 
but  not  brilliant, —  impressive  only  with  spirit-force.  And  it 
made  his  so  impressive  in  this  way  that  the  young  pastor 
soon  saw  his  congregation  —  which  he  had  chosen  as  the 
smaller  of  two  Boston  parishes  offered  him  at  once  —  in- 
creasing, till  a  new  church  was  needed  in  place  of  the 
quaint  old  barn  that  had  descended  to  them  from  the  Pres- 
byterians ;  for  Channing's  church  happened  to  be  in  origin 
the  single  Presbyterian  foundation  in  the  city  of  Congrega- 
tionalists. 

And  what  was  the  young  man's  thought  at  this  time, 
doctrinally  speaking  .■*  It  might  be  called  vaguely  un-Cal- 
vinistic.  It  was  like  the  common  Boston  thought  around 
him.  And  here  my  "pictures"  cease,  and  I  come  to  the 
second  part  of  my  sermon ;  or,  rather,  the  picture  that  I  now 
would  outline  is  a  moving  picture,  is  the  drama  of  a  Change 
of  Faith.  To  understand  "  Dr.  Channing's  relation  to  the 
Unitarian  movement,"  we  must  understand  something  of 
the  movement  itself.  It  is  a  well-nigh  forgotten  story,  nor 
is  it  worth  while  often  to  rehearse  such  stories.  Yet  it  is 
well  enough  to  know,  for  instance,  what  happened  sixty 
years  ago  to  give  us  a  Unity  church   to-day,  and  specially 


CELEBRATION    AT    ST.    PAUL.  307 

well  to  trace  this  story,  because  it  is  a  clear-cut,  typical  in- 
stance on  a  small  scale,  of  evolution  in  religion. 

The  orthodox  critics  are  perfectly  right  in  calling  "  Uni- 
tarianism"  a  transitional  theology.  That  is  its  chief  merit. 
Still  more  exactly,  it  is  but  a  single  phase  in  a  long  move- 
ment of  transition,  not  beginning  and  not  ending  with  itself. 
In  this  country, —  to  limit  our  look  to  that, —  the  movement 
thus  far  embraces  three  phases:  (i)  The  "Arminian,"  from 
about  1740  to  1800;  (2)  The  "Unitarian"  phase  proper, 
from  about  1800  to  1840;  (3)  The  "Transcendental  and 
Critical,"  from  1840  onwards.  Channing's  life  barely  lasted 
.  through  the  second. 

The  starting-point  of  all  is  the  rigid  Calvinism  which  the 
Pilgrims  and  Puritans  brought  with  them  to  New  England  in 
the  seventeenth  century, —  the  century  of  which  the  West- 
minster Confession  is  the  theological  monument  and  the 
survival.  We  smile  at  that  rigidness  to-day, —  the  modern 
Calvinist  no  less  than  others, —  as  a  faith  that  put  seven 
solemn  Sundays  in  the  week,  and  legislated  by  the  light  of 
"Moses  his  judicials."  But  it  was  a  faith  that  filled  the 
wilderness  with  psalms,  and  made  each  log  hut  a  temple  of 
the  Eternal  God.  A  noble  faith, —  to  have  had  in  one's 
grandfathers  far  enough  removed.  The  iron  in  it  then  was 
largely  in  the  form  of  bars ;  but,  absorbed  by  the  self-disci- 
plines that  it  imposed,  that  iron  became  constitutional,  and 
it  still  runs  as  iron  in  our  people's  blood. 

The  "great  awakening"  of  1740  found  the  bars  already 
shaky.  That  revival  revealed  New  England  to  itself.  It 
waked  some  minds  to  strict  Puritanism,  others  to  a  more 
deliberate  dissent  from  Puritanism.  The  latter  class  discov- 
ered that  they  had  unconsciously  become  "  Arminians,"  — 
a  name  of  evil  omen,  that  implied  beliefs  in  man's  free  will, 
in  the  impartial  love  of  God.  It  implied,  besides,  a  growing 
dislike  of  creeds,  a  growing  like  of  toleration,  a  tendency  to 


308  CHANNING    CENTENARY." 

reduce  faith  to  a  few  fundamentals,  and  a  care  to  phrase 
those  fundamentals  in  simple  Bible  words.  As  years  went 
by,  ^uch  minds  as  these  began  to  question,  further,  the  vica- 
rious atonement ;  a  little  later,  to  examine  the  divinity  of 
Christ.  In  Eastern  Massachusetts,  a  silence  about  these  and 
kindred  doctrines  fell  upon  the  pulpits ;  the  Trinitarian  dox- 
ologies  were  quietly  dropped ;  young  parsons  were  less 
closely  questioned  by  the  ordaining  councils  ;  the  ordination 
sermon  itself  was  apt  to  hold  a  plea  for  toleration  ;  books 
of  devout  English  heresy  were  lent  from  minister  to  min- 
ister. Now  and  then,  some  bolder  voice — Mayhew's,  per- 
haps, or  Bentley's  —  startled  the  brethren  with  a  pointed 
doubt  or  slur  of  the  old  faith  ;  but  that  was  apt  to  cost 
them  some  "exchanges."  No  break  as  yet,  however,  was 
feared  in  the  old  Church  of  the  Pilgrims.  These  men 
were  only  "moderate"  or  "liberal  Calvinists."  Freeman  of 
"  King's  Chapel  "  in  Boston,  an  Episcopalian, —  and  a  half- 
alien,  therefore,  in  this  land  of  Congregationalists,  and 
therefore  with  the  less  to  lose  by  being  independent, —  was 
the  first  to  reach,  and  to  dare  to  avow  anything  like  open 
Unitarianism  (1787). 

Meanwhile,  among  the  other  class  of  minds,  those  whom 
the  revival  had  waked  to  a  more  loyal  Puritanism,  a  process 
of  "transition"  was  also  going  on,  slower,  but  not -a  whit 
less  certain.  Hopkins,  a  disciple  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  was 
teaching  a  "  rational  Calvinism,"  which  the  fathers  of  New 
England  would  have  called  but  milder  heresy  than  that  of 
the  Arminians.  It  was  Calvinism  bettered  by  a  decidedly 
more  moral  theory  of  vicarious  atonement ;  by  a  statement 
of  man's  total  depravity  that  mystified  the  totalness  with- 
out spoiling  it ;  and  by  a  sort  of  laissez-faire  scheme  of 
reprobation,  which  represented  God  as  calling  whom  he 
pleased  to  his  grace,  and  simply  leaving  the  rest  uncalled  to 
that  native  depravity  which  made  their  deep  damnation  as 


CELEBRATION    AT    ST.    PAUL.  3O9 

inevitable  as  it  was  to  be  eternal.  This  was  so  great  an 
improvement  that,  when  Hopkinsonism  was  fully  formu- 
lated a  few  years  later,  the  Presbyterians  of  the  Middle 
States,  who  remained  genuine  Calvinists  of  the  good  old 
type,  called  the  New  England  sort  "  another  gospel,"  non- 
sense, impiety,  the  high  road  to  infidelity  and  atheism.  That 
is  the  chronic  trouble  with  all  "transition"  movements. 
They  always  lead  in  that 'direction.    . 

Channing's  sole  but  sufficiently  ample  relation  to  the 
movement  thus  far  was  that  he  was  born  toward  the  cen- 
tury's close ;  that  his  birthplace,  Newport,  was  Dr.  Hopkins' 
own  town;  that  Dr.  Hopkins'  house  was  just  across  the 
garden  from  his  own  ;  that  he  heard  his  first  sermons  as  a 
child  from  Dr.  Hopkins'  lips,  doubtless  recited  his  West- 
minster Catechism  in  Dr.  Hopkins'  study,  and  owed  more, 
as  he  tells  himself,  to  that  good  old  man  and  burly  thinker 
than  to  any  one  except  his  parents ;  also,  that  he  was 
brought  up  amid  earnestly  religious  Calvinists  of  a  moderate 
and  tolerant  kind,  while  college  life  removed  him  to  the 
still  more  liberal  Boston  influences.  He  must  needs  have 
been  well  acquainted,  therefore,  with  all  forms  of  the  chang- 
ing faith. 

Only  two  years  after  his  ordination  in  1803,  an  event 
occurred  which  may  be  said  to  mark  the  beginning  of  the 
second  —  the  "Unitarian"  —  phase  of  the  transition.  It 
was  the  appointment  of  Dr.  Ware  as  professor  of  divinity  at 
Harvard  College.  Henry  Ware,  known  to  be  "Arminian,'' 
suspected  of  being  "  Arian  ! "  Five  years  later,  Kirkland, 
one  of  the  most  advanced  of  the  liberals,  was  called  from  a 
Boston  pulpit  to  its  presidency.  It  was  too  true.  Harvard 
College,  simply  descending  from  generation  to  generation  in 
the  line  of  Massachusetts  culture,  was,  by  that  title,  found 
to  be  in  the  hands  of  the  liberals  in  1800. 

The  orthodox,  now  thoroughly  alarmed,  began  to  muster 


310  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

their  forces  for  attack ;  and  for  ten  years  they  tried  in  vain 
to  drive  these  liberals  to  avow  "  Unitarianism."  But  that 
name  the  liberals  very  honestly  repelled,  because  at  the 
time  it  was  closely  identified  with  "  humanitarian  "  views  of 
Christ,  while  their  own  views  were  earnestly  and  strongly 
"  Arian  " ;  that  is,  to  most,  at  least,  of  them,  Christ,  though 
not  longer  regarded  as  the  Eternal  God,  was  a  being  far 
above  all  archangels  in  his  nature  and  his  dignities.  Yet 
between  1805  and  181 5  the  liberals,  as  a  whole,  must  be 
called  a  silent  and  non-committal  brotherhood.  No  doubt, 
many  were  still  vague  in  their  own  thought  ;  no  doubt,  all 
deprecated  the  irreligiousness  of  angry  theological  contro- 
versy; no  wonder  they  could  not  bear  the  thought  of  a  break 
in  the  dear  old  Church  of  the  forefathers^  In  other  words, 
they  were  in  the  "  Broad  Church  "  attitude,  so  well  known 
to-day,  and  not  admirable  then  or  now,  because  not  simply 
and  honestly  self-representing;  and  yet  to  have  been  for- 
ward for  the  fray  would  have  shown  a  still  more  fault-worthy 
spirit,  and  even  more  misrepresenting.  In  spite  of  this 
silence,  however,  many  signs  —  the  temper  of  the  magazines, 
and  the  convention  sermons  ;  the  limiting  of  ministerial  ex- 
changes ;  an  occasional  church-break  or  trial  for  heresy ;  the 
founding  of  the  Andover  Theological  School,  and  young 
Thacher's  keen  criticism  on  its  "  designedly  ambiguous " 
and  everlastingly  unalterable  creed ;  the  bold  anti-trinitarian 
stand  at  this  time  taken  by  the  Universalist  leaders,  and 
the  scholarly  defence  by  Andrews  Norton,  and  his  friends 
of  the  same  position  —  all  these  signs  indicated  a  fast- 
approaching  crisis. 

It  arrived  at  last  by  a  strange  transatlantic  route.  A 
Mr.  Belsham,  London  Unitarian  preacher  of  the  extreme 
sort,  printed  in  a  biography  some  Boston  letters  received 
from  Freeman  of  "  King's  Chapel,"  —  letters  describing  the 
non-committal  liberalism  in  vogue  around  him.     Promptly, 


CELEBRATION    AT    ST.    PAUL.  3II 

those  letters  were  made  to  appear  in  pamphlet  form  in 
Boston ;  and  then  Dr.  Morse,  of  Charlestown,  father  of  the 
father  of  the  telegraph,  in  his  magazine  well  named  the 
Panoplist,  bore  down  on  Boston,  and  gave  three  ringing 
blows,  charging :  (i)  that  the  New  England  liberals  shared 
Belsham's  low,  humanitarian  view  of  Christ ;  (2)  that,  in 
sharing  it  without  avowing  it,  they  were  systematic  hypo- 
crites; (3)  that,  for  so  thinking  and  so  doing,  they  ought  to 
be  denied  all  Christian  fellowship. 

The  liberals  could  not  keep  silence  now  ;  but  who  should 
be  their  spokesman  } 

Channing  was  thirty-five  years  old.  The  beautiful  face  in 
Allston's  portrait — not  the  one  before  you,  which  was  from 
a  painting  made  many  years  later  —  shows  him  as  he  then 
was,  with  the  light  of  his  great  thought  dawning  on  him,  be- 
fore the  eyes  gazed  widely  and  the  lips  were  set.  He  had 
been  a  quiet  minister,  making  his  calls,  preaching  his  twice  a 
day,  not  often  going  to  the  Anthology  Club,  but  becoming 
known  as  one  who  made  men  feel  religious.  Sad  and  indig- 
nant, Channing  answered  the  attack.  He  admitted  the  Uni- 
tarianism,  using  that  word  in  its  broad  sense,  unconfined  to 
Belsham's  view  of  Christ.  Opinions  differed  among  them 
as  to  Christ,  he  said.  "  To  think  with  Belsham  was  no 
crime."  But,  as  a  fact,  few  did.  For  himself,  he  had  always 
scrupulously  avoided  every  expression  that  might  seem  to 
acknowledge  the  Trinity,  and,  when  asked  in  conversation, 
had  explicitly  avowed  dissent.  As  to  the  pulpit  silence 
about  the  Unitarianism,  he  admitted,  justified,  glorified  it. 
The  charge  of  hyjDocrisy  was  a  slander.  "  We  preach  pre- 
cisely as  if  no  such  doctrine  as  the  Trinity  had  ever  been 
known."  No  doctrine  was  more  abstract  or  perplexing,  so 
apt  to  gender  strife.  "  We  all  of  us  think  it  best  to  preach 
what  we  esteem  to  be  the  truth,  and  to  say  very  little  about 
(speculative)  error."     About  Calvinism,  had   they   not  been 


312  CHANNING    CENTENARY, 

also  silent  ?  Yet  they  were  well  known  anti-Calvinists,  and 
no  preachini;  was  more  easy  or  more  popular  than  attack 
upon  its  dogmas  ;  and  they  deemed  its  errors  far  more 
injurious  than  any  about  Christ's  person.  "  Yet  the  name 
Calvinist  has  never,  I  presume,  been  uttered  by  us  in  the 
pulpit."  Not  hypocrisy,  but  self-djenial  rather.  And  then, 
with  all  his  heart  and  soul  and  mind  and  strength,  he  depre- 
cated the  threatened  break  in  the  Church. 

To  answer  him,  Samuel  Worcester  now  stepped  forward 
in  behalf  of  orthodoxy.  To  and  fro  the  letters  went,  till 
each  had  three  in  print.  It  was  the  first  set  debate  of  the 
"  Unitarian  controversy,"  and  as  such  turned  less  upon  the 
doctrines  themselves  than  upon  their  importance  as  ground 
for  breaking  fellowship.  Were  the  liberals,  in  ceasing  to  be 
Calvinists  and  Trinitarians,  ceasing  to  be  Christians .-'  was 
the  question.  Channing  said  the  differences  are  not  funda- 
mental. "  Fundamental !  "  said  Worcester.  That  was  all, 
but  that  was  final. 

At  last,  then,  the  heresy  was  out ;  a  name  had  been 
forced  on  it ;  the  schism  had  begun.  The  orthodox  were 
peremptory  ;  and,  spite  of  all  reluctance, —  felt  mainly  by  the 
elder  liberals,  who  had  out-thought,  but  not  in  sympathies 
outgrown,  the  old  faith, —  the  two  churches,  no  longer  now 
two  parties  of  one  church,  drew  off  from  one  another. 
Twenty  stormy  years  followed, —  years  of  clashing  contro- 
versy with  each  other,  years  of  inward  organization  on  both 
sides. 

Channing  kept  the  leader's  place  ;  and  once,  twice,  thrice 
again,  his  plain,  strong  words  served  to  draw  the  fresh 
attack.  Whatever  he  said  seemed  to  have  more  power  than 
any  earnestness  of  others.  The  first  time  was  in  1819, 
when  he  preached  at  Baltimore  the  famous  ordination  ser- 
mon defining  Unitarianism.  It  was  published  and  repub- 
lished, and  probably  created  a  greater  sensation  than   any 


CELEBRATION    AT    ST.    PAUL.  313 

single  sermon  ever  preached  in  America.  At  once,  it  led  to 
three  more  set  debates,  two  of  which  became  the  classics  of 
the  "  Unitarian  controversy," — those  in  which  Prof.  Stuart 
and  Prof.  Woods  of  the  Andover  School  faced  Prof.  Norton 
and  Prof.  Ware  of  the  Cambridge  School,  Stuart  and  Norton 
debating  with  each  other  the  dogma  of  the  Trinity,  Woods 
and  Ware  the  doctrine  of  Calvinism.  From  the  Baltimore 
sermon  and  these  debates,  men  at  last  began  to  plainly  see 
what  Unitarianism  was,  both  in  its  denials  and  in  its  affir- 
mations. Saw,  namely,  that  it  was  a  Bible  faith  buttressed 
by  Bible  texts ;  that  it  meant  belief  in  revelation,  miracles, 
the  superhuman  Christ ;  but  that  it  said  Unity,  not  Trinity, 
in  naming  God  ;  that  it  said  superhuman,  not  deity,- in  nam- 
ing Christ;  said  revelation,  not  the  "literal  God  word"  in 
naming  the  Bible  ;  that  in  saying  atonement,  it  meant  man 
uplifted  and  reconciled  to  God  by  the  power  of  a  holy 
Saviour's  life  and  martyrdom,  not  God  reconciled  to  man 
by  the  agonies  of  a  sacrificial  death;  that  it  rejected  as 
essentially  immoral  all  idea  of  vicarious  guilt  or  vicarious 
punishment;  that,  above  all,  no  shred  of  "Calvinism"  with 
its  creed  of  total  depravity  and  arbitrary  election  was  left, 
but  in  its  place  came  a  new  and  mighty  affirmation  that 
human  nature  and  human  reason  were  in  themselves  akin  to 
God,  and  deserved  not  vilification,  but  rather  a  reverence 
due  to  things  that  shared  divinity.  This  was  "  Channing 
Unitarianism." 

Three  times,  I  said,  his  words  proved  battle  signals.  The 
second  time  was  the  famous  dedication  sermon  at  New  York 
in  1825,  in  which  he  vindicated  this  "Unitarianism  as  the 
system  most  favorable  to  piety."  His  opponents  have  never 
forgiven  him  the  allusion  in  it  to  the  "central  gallows  of  the 
universe."  The  third  time  was  the  "election  sermon"  in 
1830,  in  which  he  spoke  of  modern  forms  of  "inquisition." 
This  word  brought  on  one  more  debate,  and  then  the  "  Uni- 


314  CllANNING    CENTENARY. 

tarian  controversy  "  was  virtually  over.  It  had  been  short, 
anil  (lurinL;"  the  last  few  years  had  been  sadly  sharp  on  both 
sides.  Yet,  perhaps,  no  church  schism  that  involved  so 
clean  a  break  has  had  less  of  bad  blood  in  it.  The  hottest 
anger  was  roused  in  certain  parishes  where  the  supreme 
court's  decision  that  the  church  property  belonged  to  the 
parish  at  large,  and  not  to  the  inner  circle  of  "church-mem- 
bers," wrought  some  real  hardship.  By  this  decision,  many 
a  "  First  Parish  "  of  Eastern  Massachusetts,  the  very  earliest 
homestead  of  the  old  New  England  faith,  was  found  to  be  by 
large  majorities  in  "  Unitarian  "  possession  ;  and  a  second 
steeple  now  rose  in  place,  where,  till  then,  the  church  had 
been  only  the  "  meeting-house  "  for  the  whole  town. 

Meanwhile,  in  other  ways  the  new  party  had  been  organ- 
izing itself.  It  now  had  a  name,  doctrines,  churches,  chiefs, 
ministerial  conferences,  the  "  American  Unitarian  Associa- 
tion"  (1825),  and  several  literary  organs.  Harvard  College 
was  largely  under  its  control ;  and  many  of  the  strongest, 
probably  the  most  of  the  well-educated,  minds  of  the  State 
were  its  helpers.  And  yet  this  outward  triumph  was 
already  nearly  over  in  1830.  It  was  confined  to  Massa- 
chusetts, and  in  that  State  to  the  eastern  half.  Cultured 
rationalism  can  never  quickly  generate  fresh  material ;  and 
the  material  slowly  accumulated  through  three  generations 
of  growing  liberalism  (since  1740)  had  already  been  appro- 
priated. Already  Lyman  Beecher  had  kindled  a  strong 
back-fire  in  the  very  heart  of  Boston  ;  and,  as  the  country 
population  came  pressing  to  the  city  year  by  year,  they 
brought  with  them  their  country  Calvinism,  ready  to  be 
modified  indeed  by  the  new  views  of  their  own  chiefs,  ready 
even  to  be  modified  somewhat  by  Unitarian  principles,  but 
by  no  means  ready  to  accept  the  Unitarian  name  or  Unita- 
rian positions.  Thenceforward,  say  from  1830  to  1835,  the 
growth  of  Unitarianism  has  been  inward,  by  its  own  devel- 


CELEBRATION    AT    ST.    PAUL.  315 

opment,  its  own  renewed  "transition";  and  outward,  chiefly 
by  a  certain  "leavening"  influence  upon  the  sects  in  con- 
tact with  it. 

Next,  it  should  be  observed  that  he  fought  but  little  even 
against  opinions.  Nothing  that  he  wrote  of  a  controversial 
nature  remains  unpublished,  says  his  careful  biographer ; 
and  the  pieces,  only  eight  or  ten  in  number,  show  how  very 
little  of  a  controversialist  he  was,  in  spite  of  his  fame  of  lead- 
ership. Apparently,  through  all  that  stormy  time,  he  did 
not  carry  to  his  own  pulpit  one  single  sermon  "against  Cal- 
vinism," one  set  argument  "against  the  Trinity,"  one  system- 
atic exposition  of  "  the  Unitarian  system  "  !  Think  what  a 
calm  in  his  own  soul,  above  the  storm,  that  implies, —  what 
nobility  of  judgment,  what  true  proportioning  and  right 
estimate  of  things  by  their  real  importance !  "  The  most 
effectual  method  of  expelling  error  is  not  to  meet  it  sword  in 
hand,  but  gradually  to  instil  great  truths  with  which  it  can- 
not easily  coexist,  and  by  which  the  mind  outgrows  it." 
"  Never  distrust  the  power  of  a  great  truth  fairly  uttered." 
The  words,  his  own,  state  his  method  of  controversy.  It  was 
the  positive,  not  the  negative,  method.  His  specific  work  as 
a  "  theologian  "  was  to  affirm  and  unfold  the  doctrine  of  di- 
vinity in  human  nature, —  that  larger  and  perpetual  incarna- 
tion, ignored  by  those  who  made  a  single  historic  incarnation 
one  corner-stone  of  Christianity,  and  man's  total  depravity 
the  other  corner-stone.  His  work  as  a  "social  reformer" 
was  to  apply  this  doctrine  of  divinity  in  human  nature  to 
human  institutions, —  a  work  somewhat,  and  naturally,  neg- 
lected by  those  who  took  the  more  hopeless  view  of  the 
race.  This  was  constructive  work  :  the  destruction,  the  ne- 
gation, was  but  incidental.  This  work  was  for  religion  : 
that  belonged  to  the  ism,  which  they  might  organize  to  em- 
phasize who  would, —  not  he.  He  was  the  inspircr,  not  the 
organizer  of   the    Unitarians ;    the    prophet,  in  no  way  the 


3l6  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

general,  of  their  movement.  Only  in  this  sense  can  he  be 
called  its  leader. 

Not  their  organizer :  that  is  a  point  to  be  emphasized,  if 
we  would  understand  Dr.  Channing.  Indeed,  he  distrusted 
organizations  of  all  kinds  with  remarkable  distrust.  Neither 
in  the  cause  of  war  nor  of  temperance  nor  of  abolition  of 
slavery — his  three  chief  lines  of  social  work  —  nor  of  Uni- 
tarianism,  would  he  ally  himself  to  "parties,"  fearing  their 
tyranny  only  less  than  he  feared  the  tyranny  which  they 
opposed.  True,  he  openly  on  all  occasions  shared  their 
reproach  with  his  fellow-believers  :  he  took  the  front  in  the 
first  announcements,  and  afterwards,  as  needs  demanded 
him  ;  but  as  openly  he  refused  to  identify  himself  with  any 
settled  and  consolidated  system  called  "Unitarianism."  He 
took  but  little  interest  in  the  "Unitarian  Association." 
His  own  preference  would  probably  have  been  to  speak, 
write,  publish,  confer  together  in  an  annual  meeting,  under 
some  slight  bond  of  union.  And,  in  this  preference,  he  had 
the  sympathy  of  many  of  the  older  liberals.  It  was  the 
younger  men  that,  for  good  or  ill,  "organized"  Unitarianism 
into  a  denomination. 

As  he  grew  older,  and,  withdrawing  from  his  parish  work, 
gave  his  mind  increasingly  to  the  social  applications  of  his 
views,  in  pamphlets  on  the  slavery  question  and  the  eleva- 
tion of  the  laborer,  the  prisoner,  the  intemperate;  as  he 
grew  older  doing  this,  his  interest  in  the  Unitarianism  even 
lessened.  The  open  mind,  the  principle  of  liberty  in  religion, 
the  freest  use  of  reason  in  its  problems,  he  seemed  to  trust 
more  and  more ;  the  day's  solution  of  those  problems,  less 
and  less.  "  This  Unitarianism,  which  so  many  seem  to 
think  is  the  last  word  of  the  human  mind,  is  only  the  vesti- 
bule !  We  have  everything  to  learn."  That  was  said  quite 
early  in  the  "controversy,"  I  believe.  But,  in  his  later 
years,  such  expressions  grow  even  common.     "  I  have  little 


CELEBRATION    AT    ST.    PAUL.  317 

or  no  interest  in  Unitarians  as  a  sect.  I  have  hardly  any- 
thing to  do  with  them.  I  can  endure  no  sectarian  bonds. 
Old  Unitarianism  must  undergo  important  modifications 
or  developments.  It  cannot  quicken  and  regenerate  the 
world.  It  pledged  itself  to  progress  as  its  life  and  end ; 
but  it  has  grown  stationary,  and  now  we  have  a  Unitarian 
orthodoxy."  This  was  said  in  the  opening  years  of  the 
"Transcendental"  period,  that  which  I  called  the  third 
phase  of  this  whole  transition  movement.  It  indicates  no 
symptoms  of  return  to  the  old  orthodoxy,  surely.  Neither 
does  it  indicate  sympathy  complete  with  the  young  Trans- 
cendentalists,  Emerson  and  Parker  and  their  friends,  who 
now  began  to  follow  out  the  logic  of  the  Unitarian  principle 
to  results  quite  different  from  those  which  Channing  cher- 
ished. What  it  does  indicate  is,  as  said  before,  sympathy 
with  that  principle,  that  method,  as,  above  all  other  treas- 
ures, the  thing  most  precious  to  religion. 

His  advice  to  the  friends  who  brought  him  the  little  cove- 
nant of  the  Newport  Unitarjan  Church,  formed  in  1835, 
shows  the  daring  of  his  piety  in  his  fear  of  harm  to  religious 
liberty.  The  one  thing  he  demurred  at  in  the  covenant  was 
the  expression  "believing  in  one  God,  the  Father."  Chan- 
ning, whose  very  life  was  that  belief  become  inspiration  and 
serenity, —  Channing  whose  sermon  at  the  dedication  of  that 
very  church  was  on  "The  Worship  of  the  Father  a  Service 
of  Gratitude  and  Joy,"  demur  at  that  confession  ?  Yes,  in  a 
church-covenant, —  fearful  lest  even  that  dear  faith  might 
exclude  a  true  worshipper,  and  set  orthodoxy  of  opinion 
above  the  filial  and  fraternal  spirit. 

Here  we  must  stop.  The  second  phase  of  the  transition 
in  American  theology  was  passing  to  the  third,  and  Chan- 
ning's  death  in  1842  almost  marks  the  date  of  the  passing. 
His  relation  to  that  third  phase  can  be  told  in  a  single  word : 
it  was  the  relation  of  a  dawn  to  a  daybreak,  of  a  May  to 


3lS  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

a  Tune.  We  will  not  speculate  on  what  his  own  opinions 
niii;ht  have  become,  had  he  lived  to  "inspire"  men  through 
that  June-time  with  his  gracious  "prophecy."  Let  no 
young  "  Radical,"  emphasising  his  Bible  criticisms  and  mir- 
acle denials,  dare  to  claim  him.  Let  no  "  Conservative," 
clinging  to  the  dear  old  ism,  dare  to  claim  him,  either. 
Channing  would  have  been  above  them  both,  even  as  in  his 
life  he  was  above  such  things  full  of  the  unessential.  One 
thing  only  may  be  said  :  for  one  thing  both  may  claim  him 
as  their  own,  and  with  them  all  true  lovers  in  all  churches, — 
namely,  this,  that  Channing  would  have  been  as  "young  for 
liberty  "  to-day  as  in  the  day  when  his  living  lips  made  men 
feel  the  Eternal  in  them,  and  "know  by  the  look  in  his  eyes 
that  those  eyes  had  looked  on  God." 


THE  CELEBRATION  AT  MEADVILLE,  PENN. 


The  following  account  of  the  meeting  at  Meadville, 
Pennsylvania,  is  taken  from  the  report  in  the  Meadville 
Republican  of  April  9  :  — 

The  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Dr.  William  Ellery 
Channing  was  commemorated  at  the  Unitarian  Church  Wednesday 
evening  by  appropriate  services.  The  audience  was  not  large,  but 
what  it  lacked  in  numbers  was  more  than  made  up  in  refinement,  and 
in  appreciation  of  the  serviges  of  the  occasion.  The  celebration  was  in 
no  wise  exclusive  or  sectarian.  It  was  rather  a  union  of  all  sects  and 
denominations  in  paying  tribute  to  the  memory  of  a  man  whose  life 
was  spent  in  heroic  effort  to  harmonize  sectarian  differences  and  in 
inculcating  that  spirit  of  broad  and  liberal  tolerance  which  binds  all 
denominations  in  the  common  Christian  brotherhood,  finds  some  redeem- 
ing quality  in  every  form  of  religious  worship,  "and  good  in  everything." 
Many  gentlemen  prominent  in  denominations  other  than  the  Unitarian 
were  present,  and  evinced  a  lively  interest  in  the  services,  one  of  them, 
Rev.  George  Whitman,  delivering  a  highly  interesting  address  upon 
Channing's  life  and  character. 

The  regular  services  were  preceded  by  some  excellent  music  by  the 
choir,  after  which  Mr.  Harris,  of  the  Theological  School,  who  con- 
ducted the  meeting,  read  a  portion  of  the  Scriptures,  and  Dr.Livermore 
offered  a  fitting  prayer. 

Mr.  Harris  began  the  regular  services  by  reading  an  essay  giving  an 
outline  of  the  history  of  Channing's  birth,  his  ministerial  labor  and 
his  death.  The  paper  was  a  carefully  prepared  historical  sketch,  and 
abounded  in  extracts  from  the  writings  of  Channing's  contemporaries, 


320  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

giving  their  estimates  of  his  wonderful  genius.  The  essay  was  listened 
to  with  marked  interest,  and  indicated  deep  and  patient  research  in  its 
preparation. 

Professor  Frederic  Huidekoper  was  the  second  speaker,  and  our  ina- 
bility to  present  a  verbatim  report  of  his  remarks  is  a  matter  of  genuine 
regret.  He  spoke  of  the  intense  sincerity  everywhere  apparent  in  Chan- 
ning's  writings,  of  the  deep  earnestness  in  every  sentence  he  wrote  or 
uttered,  and  of  the  strong,  manly  faith  which  characterized  every  act  of 
his  life.  Professor  Huidekoper  referred  to  Channing's  clearness  of  state- 
ment, to  the  simplicity  of  his  language,  and  the  ease  with  which  he  made 
his  meaning  clear  to  his  readers,  as  among  the  secrets  of  his  success  as 
a  minister  and  a  philosopher.  It  was  doubted  if  Channing  ever  penned 
a  sentence  for  mere  rhetorical  effect.  He  never  sacrificed  sense  to 
sound.  He  always  thought  before  he  wrote,  and  when  he  wrote  his 
words  carried  conviction  with  them. 

Professor  Huidekoper  spoke  of  the  great  affection  for  Channing  in 
Europe,  and  referred  to  numerous  expressions  of  this  affection  which  he 
had  heard  in  Great  Britain  and  various  points  on  the  Continent.  Even 
among  those  races  who  opposed  his  teachings,  and  regarded  his  love 
of  liberty  and  his  devotion  to  the  cause  of  humanity  as  menacing  the 
safety  of  their  social  and  political  relations  —  even  among  those  races, 
Channing's  purity  of  character  and  the  vigor  of  his  arguments  com- 
pelled universal  respect  and  esteem.  Channing's  critics  have  charged 
him  with  being  an  idealist ;  but  his  idealism,  if  he  had  any,  was  that 
which  was  exemplified  by  his  own  life. 

No  more  has  been  attempted  in  the  above  synopsis  than  the  briefest 
outline  of  Professor  Huidekoper's  address.  His  admiration  of  Chan- 
ning's conciseness  of  statement  and  simplicity  of  terms  was  expressed 
in  language  that  was  of  itself  a  model  of  simplicity  and  clearness.  His 
remarks  were  clothed  in  the  plainest,  purest  Saxon,  and  were  a  worthy 
tribute  to  the  eloquent  simplicity  which  adorns  every  page  and  every 
sentence  of  Channing's  writings. 

Mr.  Savage,  from  the  Theological  School,  followed  Professor  Huide- 
koper, and  offered  what  he  had  to  say  as  a  general  report  from  fields 
beyond  Unitarianism,  as  a  report  from  the  Evangelical  Church.  He 
spoke  of  the  growing  interest  in  the  EvangeHcal  churches  in  the  life  and 
works  of  Channing,  and  related  a  number  of  instances  of  the  beneficent 
results  which  had  followed  a  study  of  his  writings,  among  both  ministers 
and  laymen.  He  said  this  interest  in  Channing's  writings  was  growing, 
not  only  among  the  clergy  of  the  Protestant  churches,  but  among  those 
of  the  Catholic  Church  on  both  sides  of  the  ocean.     Channing's  broad 


CELEBRATION    AT    MEADVILLE.  321 

philanthropy,  his  love  of  humanity,  his  strong,  brave  words  for  univer- 
sal liberty  and  progress,  and  his  pure,  simple  life  endeared  him  to  all 
mankind,  and  possessed  an  influence  that  would  be  felt  and  recognized 
for  generations  to  come. 

Dr.  Wilsoii  was  the  fourth  speaker.  He  said  that  until  four  years 
ago  his  acquaintance  with  the  life  and  works  of  Dr.  Channing  had  been 
meagre  and  unsatisfactory.  Four  years  ago,  however,  while  in  London, 
he  picked  up  a  volume  of  Channing's  works  in  the  house  of  a  friend  ; 
and  the  astonishment  of  his  friend,  when  he  informed  him  that  he,  an 
American,  had  not  read  it,  was  so  great,  that  he  lost  no  time  after  return- 
ing to  this  country  in  giving  them  a  careful  reading.  Dr.  Channing,  the 
speaker  believed,  was  one  of  the  men  whom  lovers  of  the  good  and 
the  great  and  the  true  would  place  in  the  gallery  of  the  world's  noblest 
heroes.  Not  with  Napoleon  nor  with  Alexander,  because  they  were 
great  only  in  a  transitory  or  a  worldly  sense,  but  in  a  higher,  brighter 
niche,  beneath  which  it  might  be  written,  "  He  loved  and  lived  for  his 
fellow-men."  His  example,  his  spotless  life,  and  his  ringing  words  for 
truth,  liberty,  and  justice,  are  a  legacy,  not  alone  for  this  church  or  for 
that,  but  for  all  men  and  all  churches  and  all  time.  He  was  a  pioneer  in 
the  great  cause  of  Christian  progress ;  and,  in  the  criticisms  and  the  con- 
tumely that  were  heaped  upon  him  by  those  who  blindly  fought  against 
the  truths  which  he  represented,  he  only  experienced  the  antagonism, 
often  amounting  to  persecution,  which  reformers  have  met  with  in  every 
age  of  the  world's  history.  As  Socrates  was  doomed  to  death  by  a 
court  of  his  fellows,  whose  cloudy  minds  even  the  brightness  of  his 
intelligence  was  unable  to  penetrate ;  as  the  Saviour  was  sacrificed 
by  a  council  whose  ignorance  and  mental  darkness  debarred  them  from 
an  understanding  of  the  glorious  truths  of  his  mission;  as  all  great 
reformers  in  all  ages  have  been  opposed  and  often  persecuted, —  so  Chan- 
ning was  no  exception,  and  upon  him  fell  the  contumely,  the  denuncia- 
tion, of  those  who  stood  in  the  clouds  beneath  him.  But,  though  scarce 
a  generation  has  passed  since  he  withdrew  from  the  field,  the  truthful- 
ness of  his  teachings  and  the  nobility  of  his  life  shine  forth  like  a 
beacon  light,  a  priceless  legacy  to  all  mankind. 

Rev.  George  Whitman,  of  the  First  Baptist  Church,  followed  Dr. 
Wilson,  and  delivered  an  address  so  befitting  the  occasion  that  we  take 
real  pleasure  in  presenting  it  in  full.     Mr.  Whitman  said:  — 

All  denominations  have  their  great  names.  Among  the  Roman  Cath- 
olics, we  have  a  Fenelon,  a  Pascal,  and  a  Massillon  :  among  the  Episco- 
palians, a  Leighton,  a  Taylor,  and  a  Sherlock;  among  the  Lutherans,  a 
Jean  Paul  Richter,  a  Tholuck,  and  a  Melanchthon;  among  the  Baptists, 

22 


;jj  CMANNING    CENTENARY. 

a  Wavland,  a  Robert  Hall,  and  a  Spurgeon ;  and,  among  the  Unitarians, 
we  have  at  least  one  great  name  that  deserves  to  be  placed  among  the 
stars,  and  that  is  the  name  of  William  EUery  Channing. 

Great  names  are  the  inheritance  of  humanity.  Prejudiced  men  may 
seek  to  confine  these  names  within  the  narrow  bounds  of  their  own  sect; 
but  true  greatness  overleaps  all  barriers,  and  lives  not  for  party,  but  for 
humanity.  Truth  is  the  property  of  mankind :  and,  when  a  man  comes 
into  the  world  full-freighted  with  heaven's  inspiration,  and  bearing  a 
message  of  truth  for  man,  it  is  madness  for  little  souls  to  gather  around 
him,  and  claim  him  as  their  own.  True  greatness  is  the  heritage  of  the 
race.  So  far  from  being  jealous  of  the  great  men  in  other  denomina- 
tions, we  ought  to  rejoice  in  them.  They  are  all  ours.  We  take  a  pride 
in  their  greatness :  we  share  an  interest  in  their  fame.  For,  while  we 
are  not  compelled  to  accept  their  errors,  we  joyfully  acknowledge  their 
charity,  philanthropy,  and  devotion,  and  claim  these  qualities  as  the 
richest  legacy  of  man  to  man. 

And  so  I  claim  a  share  in  the  greatness  and  goodness  of  Channing. 
He  was  not  thine  alone,  but  mine  as  well.  And,  as  I  should  have  been 
proud  to  have  stood  by  his  side  in  Faneuil  Hall  when  he  pleaded  the 
cause  of  the  enslaved  African,  so  now  I  am  proud  in  the  privilege  of 
placing  one  little  laurel  leaf  upon  his  broad,  manly  brow.  We  honor 
ourselves,  my  friends,  in  honoring  the  memory  of  one  who  lived  so  un- 
selfishly, so  devotedly  as  he,  and  of  whom  Dewey  has  said,  "  He  strove 
to  give  birth  to  his  own  glowing  idea  of  the  true  Christian  man." 

With  the  best  of  New  England's  blood  in  his  veins,  and  the  best  of 
Harvard's  culture  in  his  head,  Channing  lived  to  do  noble  service  for 
humanity.  He  was  one  of  the  few  men  of  earth  who  clearly  saw  that 
greatness  and  goodness  are  inseparable.  He  might  have  risen  high  in 
the  realm  of  science,  of  jurisprudence,  or  belles-lettres ;  but  his  relig- 
ious instincts  early  taught  him  that  the  crowning  greatness  of  man  was 
only  compatible  with  the  truest  goodness ;  and  so,  in  early  life,  he  made 
companions  of  such  authors  as  Fenelon  and  Pascal,  and  attained  to  that 
purity  of  character  for  which  he  is  justly  distinguished.  In  his  youthful 
days,  he  was  called  "the  peace-maker";  and  he  quickly  learned  that 
life's  noblest  duty  is  to  set  men  at  peace  with  their  Maker.  In  a  letter 
to  a  friend,  written  in  his  twentieth  year,  he  speaks  of  having  met  with 
"  that  change  of  heart  which  is  necessary  to  constitute  a  Christian " ; 
and,  to  the  facetious  laughter  of  the  worldling  who  would  call  his  conver- 
sion a  farce,  he  opposes  that  conscious  assurance  which  the  restored 
blind  man  of  Jerusalem  felt,  when  he  said,  "  This  I  know, —  that,  whereas 
I  was  blind,  now  I  see."     Previous  to  this  change,  he  regarded  mere 


CELEBRATION  AT  MEADVILLE.  323 

moral  attainments  as  sufficient;  but,  from  this  time  forward,  he  solemnly 
devotes  his  life  and  services  to  his  God. 

But,  though  Channing  knew  that  greatness  and  goodness  are  insepa- 
rable, he  knew  also  that  goodness  is  not  acquired  by  the  sacrifice  of  con- 
victions. He  was  no  pulpy  man,  no  man  of  putty, —  to  yield  his  princi- 
ples at  the  solicitation  of  a  false  liberality.  He  had  his  convictions  of 
truth  and  duty,  and  they  were  dear  to  him  as  the  apple  of  his  eye.  He 
knew  the  world  was  not  to  be  made  better  by  the  sacrifice  of  truth,  but 
by  the  earnest,  sincere,  and  kindly  advocacy  of  it ;  in  other  words,  as 
Paul  says,  "  By  holding  the  truth  in  love."  Without  this  courage  of  his 
own  opinion,  this  earnestness  of  conviction,  his  name  would  never  have 
passed  into  history. 

If  I  were  to  select  the  one  characteristic  that  shines  brightest  in 
Channing's  life,  it  would  be  this ;  namely,  his  large-hearted  philanthropy. 
He  held  that  "the  distinguishing  principles  of  our  holy  religion  are 
humility,  purity  of  heart,  forgiveness  of  our  worst  enemies,  forbearance 
under  the' heaviest  injuries,  detachment  from  the  pleasures  and  prosper- 
ity of  the  world,  and  supreme  affection  for  the  Deity."  These  were  the 
governing  principles  of  his  life.  His  philanthropic  spirit,  his  tender 
instincts,  his  sympathy  for  the  suffering  both  among  men  and  beasts, 
have  received  the  recognition  of  his  admiring  countrymen.  Many  of  you 
will  remember  that  story  of  his  early  days,  so  illustrative  of  his  sympa- 
thetic nature.  One  day,  in  his  rambles,  he  found  a  bird's  nest,  in  which 
were  four  little  ones,  that  opened  their  wide  mouths  to  him,  as  if  they 
were  hungry.  He  fed  them  some  crumbs  that  he  chanced  to  find  in  his 
pockets.  Every  day  thereafter,  he  hastened  homeward  from  school,  in 
order  to  get  crumbs  for  his  little  pets.  They  had  now  become  feathered, 
and  were  nearly  ready  to  fly ;  but  what  was  his  amazement,  in  coming  to 
feed  them  one  evening,  to  find  them  all  cut  into  pieces,  and  their  little 
nest  covered  with  blood, —  the  work,  no  doubt,  of  wicked  boys.  There 
on  the  tree  mournfully  sat  the  mother-bird,  looking  down  upon  young 
Channing,  as  if  he  were  the  cause  of  her  desolation.  The  lad  never 
forgot  this  inhumanity;  and,  in  after  years,  his  native  sympathy  found 
expression  in  feeding  the  hungry  mouths  of  men  and  women.  Such 
men  of  philanthropic  mould  are  nature's  truest  noblemen.  They  con- 
stitute the  true  knight-errantry  of  this  present  age.  May  God  grant 
that  you  and  I,  like  the  great  Channing,  may  always  write  such  words 
as  Love,  Right,  Justice,  and  Humanity,  with  a  large  capital  letter. 

Rev.  J.  T.  Bixby  spoke  next.  He  said  that  great  names  were  the 
most  valuable  inheritances  of  our  race.  They  come  to  us  as  common 
property:  they  are  for  all  and  to  all.     Dr.  Channing  was  a  great  man. 


324  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

and  his  greatness  was  of  the  kind  that  grows  and  brightens  with  every 
passing  year.  His  greatness  was  based  upon  two  great  traits  of  his 
character,  love  of  God  and  love  of  man.  His  love  of  the  Creator  was 
the  central  principle,  the  inspiration  of  his  whole  life.  It  developed  his 
moral  nature,  awakened  his  spiritual  energies,  and  brought  him  face  to 
face  with  those  great  problems  of  Christian  progress  with  which  he  was 
subsequently  to  grapple  in  the  great  field  of  theological  discussion. 
This  love  of  God,  awakened  in  his  heart  so  early  in  life, —  it  was  this 
love  for  the  Master  which  fully  explains  that  uprightness  'of  character 
and  gentleness  of  manner  for  which  his  whole  life  was  so  distinguished. 
Out  of  his  love  of  God,  his  love  for  man  flowed  naturally  and  freely. 
His  unstinted  philanthropy,  his  sympathy  for  the  weak  and  the  down- 
trodden of  mankind,  was  as  broad  and  deep  as  life  itself.  He  stood  for 
liberty,  for  light,  for  charity,  to  all  humanity.  He  preached  the  nobility 
of  man,  and  attested  his  doctrine  by  his  own  life.  He  taught  charity 
and  forgiveness,  not  alone  in  the  pulpit,  but  by  precept  and  example. 
His  bitterest  enemies  basked  in  the  sunlight  of  his  forgiveness,  and  the 
poorest  slave  who  sweltered  beneath  the  task-master's  lash  found  in  him 
a  loyal  friend  and  an  advocate  whose  eloquence  was  irresistible.  His 
manner  was  severe,  as  his  hfe  was  earnest.  Life  with  him  was  a  solemn 
fact,  but  not  a  sad  one.  It  was  his  destiny  rather  to  look  upon  and  deal 
with  its  graver  aspects ;  and  he  did  so  bravely  and  fearlessly.  His 
splendid  labors  in  behalf  of  morality  and  true  religion,  the  record  of  his 
busy  life,  and  the  inestimable  inheritance  of  his  works  place  Channing 
among  the  great  benefactors  of  his  race.  His  writings  are  at  once  a 
monument  to  his  genius  and  a  golden  legacy  to  posterity. 

Professor  Livermore  was  the  last  speaker.  He  paid  an  eloquent 
tribute  to  Channing's  genius  and  his  character.  Professor  Livermore's 
address  was  devoted  chiefly  to  an  analysis  of  Channing's  religious  feel- 
ings, and  a  refutation  of  the  charge  of  "idealism"  which  has  been  pre- 
ferred against  him.  Instead  of  "idealism,"  so  called.  Professor  Liver- 
more  believed  the  predominant  trait  in  Channing's  religious  thought 
might  better  be  termed  an  intense  Christian  spirituality;  or  that,  if  there 
was  idealism,  it  was  that  species  of  idealism  which  finds  expression  in 
the  highest  type  of  moral  and  physical  manhood,  which,  it  seems  to  us, 
is  no  idealism  at  all.  Professor  Livermore's  thoughts  upon  this  subject 
were  particularly  interesting,  and  indicated  a  deep  and  careful  study  of 
Channing's  character  from  a  psychological  stand-point.  We  regret  that 
we  are  unable  to  publish  the  address  entire. 

The  audience  united  in  singing,  and  were  then  dismissed  with  the 
benediction  by  Rev.  Mr.  Whitman. 


THE  CELEBRATION  AT  WASHINGTON,  D.C. 


The  National  Republican  of  April  8  gave  the  following 
brief  account  of  a  memorial  meeting  held  in  All-Souls 
Church  on  the  evening  of  April  7:  — 

His  honor  Justice  Miller  took  the  chair,  and  after  a  fervent  prayer  by 
Rev.  William  Silsbee,  of  Trenton,  N.Y.,  made  an  interesting  and  instruc- 
tive address  upon  the  place  Dr.  Channing  has  occupied  in  the  develop- 
ment of  religious  thought  in  America,  and  the  evident  greater  influence 
he  is  yet  to  exert  in  the  way  of  the  liberalization  of  theology  and  the 
exaltation  of  piety  and  faith.  At  the  conclusion  of  his  remarks,  Justice 
Miller  called  upon  Hon.  George  B.  Loring,  who  eloquently  discoursed  of 
the  career  and  character  of  Dr.  Channing  as  a  man,  thinker,  and  Chris- 
tian reformer,  showing  the  surroundings  through  which  Channing  en- 
tered his  work,  exhibiting  the  condition  of  civil  and  rehgious  thought  in 
New  England,  how  there  were  difficulties  which  the  great  soul  had  to 
overcome,  how  grandly  he  overcame  them,  and  became  a  leader  in  a  new 
era  of  thought  and  culture  in  religion,  social  affairs,  and  literature  in 
America.  Dr.  Loring's  address  was  a  broad,  scholarly,  masterful  picture 
of  the  early  growth  of  the  American  republic,  with  Dr.  Ciianning  se. 
lected  as  a  central  figure  and  shaping  actor.  Dr.  Loring  was  followed 
by  Hon.  Horace  Davis,  of  San  Francisco,  who,  in  touching  words,  told 
of  the  personal  debt  he  owes  to  the  influence  of  Dr.  Channing  at  a  time 
when  he  greatly  needed  the  help  only  Dr.  Channing's  faith  and  hope 
seemed  able  to  give. 

Hon.  Fred.  Douglass  was  exj^ected  at  this  point  to  round  out  the 
evening's  tribute  by  treating  of  Clianning's  memorable  work  as  a  philan- 
thropist;  but,  unfortunately,  Mr.  Douglass  was  detained  from  the  meet- 


3JO  CllANNING    CENTENARY. 

ing.  In  order  that  there  might  not  be  an  omission  of  this  phase  of 
Channing's  many-sided  service  to  mankind,  Rev.  Clay  MacCauley  made 
a  short  address  on  Dr.  Channing's  anti-slavery  labors,  referring  also  to 
the  one  principle  which  guided  the  great  man's  life, —  his  faith  in  the  es- 
sential dignity  of  human  nature,  which  faith  lay  back  of  his  many  efforts 
to  ameliorate  the  condition  of  all  the  down-trodden  and  unfortunate  mem- 
bers of  human  society.  Mr.  Robert  Purvis  added  a  few  words  to  Mr. 
MacCauley's  remarks.  Justice  Miller,  then,  with  some  happily  chosen 
thoughts,  brought  the  meeting  to  a  close,  reminding  the  audience  of  the 
fact  that  all  over  the  world  men  were  then  honoring  not  a  warrior,  but 
a  man  of  peace  ;  not  a  hero  of  State  or  commune,  but  a  leader  of  relig- 
ious faith  and  aspiration.  With  a  benediction  by  Rev.  A.  Kent,  of  this 
city,  this  interesting  and  instructive  meeting  closed. 

On  a  following  Sunday,  the  Rev.  Clay  MacCauley  deliv- 
ered a  di-scoiirse  upon  "  Channing's  Place  in  American 
Religious  History,"  of  which  the  Republican  said:  — 

All-Souls  Church  was  filled  yesterday  by  an  interested  audience,  gath- 
ered to  hear  Mr.  MacCauley's  discourse  upon  "Dr.  Channing :  his  Place 
in  American  Religious  History."  In  honor  of  the  day,  there  was  a 
special  floral  decoration  of  the  arches  back  of  the  pulpit.  In  the  two 
side  arches  were  wrought  in  immortelles  the  year  of  Dr.  Channing's 
birth,  "  1780,"  and  the  present  year,  "  1880";  while  in  the  central  arch, 
in  the  same  kind  of  flowers,  appeared  the  name  "  Channing."  Over  all 
was  a  beautiful  white  star. 

Mr.  MacCauley's  discourse  was  an  elaborate  analysis  of  Dr.  Chan- 
ning's character,  thought,  labors,  and  influence  in  the  religious  develop- 
ment of  our  country.  He  traced  the  great  preacher's  career,  from  his 
childhood  to  old  age,  showing  how  the  remarkable  character  developed, 
—  as  the  child,  in  a  serene  home,  responding  to  the  light  breaking 
through  the  gloom  of  the  ancestral  faith ;  as  the  college  student, 
ennobled,  in  spite  of  his  surroundings,  by  a  growing  self-respect  and 
his  new-found  faith  in  the  dignity  of  human  nature  ;  as  the  lowly  tutor  at 
Richmond,  Va.,  struggling  through  some  decisive  inner  experience;  as 
the  preacher  of  the  Federal  Street  Church,  Boston ;  as  a  leader  in  the 
Unitarian  controversy,  and  at  last  as  the  great-souled  ajiostle  of  the 
Church  of  Christ,  beyond  all  sectarian  bounds.  Mr.  MacCauley  then 
made  a  minute  exposition  of  what  was  peculiar  in  Channing's  theology, 
and  showed  how  his  beliefs  surely  and  steadily  grew  with  his  years,  in 
breadth  and  strength,  and  were  the  outcome  of  a  constantly  increasing 


CELEBRATION  AT  WASHINGTON.  32/ 

freedom  of  thought.  Channing  was  indeed  free  among  the  free.  "  To 
vindicate  the  rights  of  mind,  to  save  the  churches  from  spiritual  despot- 
ism, Channing  claimed,  had  been  nearer  his  heart  than  to  secure  a  tri- 
umph for  any  distinguishing  doctrines."  The  importance  of  Channing 
in  the  development  of  religious  thought  in  this  country  comes  from  his 
successful  moral  protest  against  Calvinism,  the  example  he  gave  of  the 
personal  moral  dignity  possible  among  men,  and  of  the  consideration 
they  can  show  to  an  ideal  welfare  for  mankind.  "  Prophet  of  the  dignity 
of  human  nature  though  he  was,  hero  of  the  struggle  in  New  England 
for  the  liberation  of  mind  from  the  ecclesiastical  thraldom,  and  leader 
though  he  was  to  the  discovery  of  some  of  the  most  inspiring  truths  we 
now  possess,  above  these,"  said  Mr.  MacCauley,  "  we  behold,  sublime 
in  moral  grandeur  and  radiant  with  love  for  man,  a  love  that  sought  to 
make  real  among  men  his  ideal  of  a  divine  humanity."  The  services 
closed  with  the  singing  of  the  following  memorial  hymn,  prepared  for 
the  day  by  the  pastor  of  the  church. 


CHANNING. 

Eternal  Being!  Source  of  all,  and  Lord! 

Humbly  we  bow  beneath  thy  sovereign  sway : 
Both  joy  and  woe,  at  thy  resistless  word, 

Brighten  and  cloud  each  creature's  fleeting  day. 

But  not  to  us,  O  God,  is  now  this  faith 

Fra-ught  with  the  doubt  and  fear  our  fathers  saw  : 

We  follow  one,  who,  from  thy  Spirit's  breath. 

Caught  the  glad  message,  Love  works  through  thy  Law. 

He,  like  thy  Christ,  thy  name,  the  Father,  found  ; 

He,  like  thy  Christ,  in  man  thy  child  discerned ; 
Wide  as  the  world,  he  saw  thy  grace  abound, — 

Saw,  and  to  men  with  eager  spirit  turned. 

Prophet  of  grace,  of  human  dignity  ; 

Truth's  bold  evangel ;  foe  to  every  wrong ; 
Brave  by  thy  might  to  set  the  bondman  free  ; 

Girt  with  a  jxnver  to  make  the  freeman  strong  I 

Father,  may  we,  with  like  devoted  zeal, 
Live  for  the  faith  that  Law  Divine  is  just; 

Strive  for  the  life  that  aims  at  human  weal ; 
Hasten  Christ's  day  of  perfect  love  and  trust. 


THE  CKLEBRATION  AT  ANN  ARBOR,  MICH. 


From  the  Argus  of  April  i6,  we  condense  the  following 
report :  — 

The  Unitarian  church  was  crowded  on  Sunday  evening 
by  people  who  came  to  listen  to  the  exercises  of  the  occa- 
sion. The  altar  was  tastily  adorned  with  flowers.  After 
prayer,  singing,  and  the  reading  of  an  extract  from  Chan- 
ning,  the  Rev.  J.  T.  Sunderland  gave  a  brief  biographical 
description  of  the  eminent  divine.  Several  letters  from 
distinguished  Unitarians,  among  the  number  one  from  Rev. 
Mr.  Collyer,  of  New  York,  were  read.  Mr.  Simderland  then 
called  upon  Judge  Harriman,  who  spoke  of  "  Channing  as  a 
Teacher  of  Religion  versus  Theology," 

JUDaE  HAERIMAN'S  ADDEESS, 

We  people  of  Ann  Arbor  are  not  peculiar  or  alone  in 
celebrating,  as  we  do  to-night,  the  one  hundredth  anniver- 
sary of  the  birth  of  William  Ellery  Channing.  In  many 
towns  and  cities  and  villages,  all  across  this  broad  continent 
from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  the  event  is  commemorated 
as  well  as  here.  The  fame  of  this  modest  and  unassuming 
man  has  crossed  the  sea ;  and  this  centenary  is  celebrated  in 
England,  in  France,  in    Italy, —  in    Florence,   honored   and 


CELEBRATION    AT   ANN    ARBOR.  329 

consecrated  by  the  grave  of  the  heroic  Parker, —  in  Hungary, 
in  Asia  Minor,  on  the  southern  slopes  of  the  Himalaya,  by 
Buddhist  and  Theist  and  Brahmin  on  the  great  plains  of 
India.  So  that  to-day  the  praises  of  Channing  are  spoken 
in  twenty  tongues  "from  the  Orient  to  the  drooping  West." 
And  it  is  probable  that  the  moral  and  intellectual  influence 
of  his  teaching  and  character  is  greater  than  that  of  any 
other  American. 

Yet  Channing  was  not  a  man  of  extraordinary  genius. 
He  was  not  a  great  scholar.  His  literary  style,  pure  and 
crisp  as  it  was,  was  not  the  best  that  our  country  has  pro- 
duced. He  had  none  of  those  adventitious  aids  secured 
by  great  wealth  or  official  position.  He  possessed  delicate 
physical  health.  He  was  sensitive,  retiring,  and  unassum- 
ing, without  confidence  in  himself,  and  utterly  lacking  in 
"  push  "  of  character,  or  will. 

What,  then,  was  the  secret  of  his  large  fame  and  influ- 
ence.'' In  my  opinion,  it  is  explained  by  the  simple  fact 
that,  like  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  he  was  a  teacher  of  natural 
religion  in  its  highest  sense,  and,  like  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  7iot 
a  teacher  of  theology  in  any  sense. 

Do  you  suppose  we  should  be  celebrating  the  hundredth 
anniversary  of  Channing  to-night,  if  he  had  been  the  apostle 
of  some  narrow  creed,  or  if  he  had  been  the  champion  of 
some  metaphysical  dogma  of  no  interest  or  value  to  man- 
kind .-*  Who  commemorates  the  birthday  of  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards or  Stephen  Hopkins }  Where  is  the  antiquarian  who 
can  tell  us  the  names  of  the  men  who  wrote  the  "  Saybrook 
Platform,"  or  the  "Proceedings  of  the  Council  of  Uort,"  or 
the  "Thirty-nine  Articles,"  or  the  "Westminster  Cate- 
chism "  .''  These  were  theologians  all,  notorious  in  their  day  ; 
but  mankind  has  allowed  their  names  to  fade  into  oblivion. 
But  in  the  city  of  London,  almost  in  sight  of  the  spot  where 
two  hundred  and  forty  years  ago  the  politicians  and  the  clergy 


330  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

of  lCni;"laiul  ami  Scotland  met  to  frame  the  "  Westminster 
Confession  of  Faith,"  there  has  been  laid,  this  very  week,  the 
foumlation  of  a  church  dedicated  to  the  memory  of  Channing, 
a  man  who  has  done  so  much  to  break  the  influence  of  that 
Confession.  And  hard  by,  in  the  great  Abbey,  unawed  by 
the  dust  or  opinions  of  England's  most  illustrious  dead, 
Dean  Stanley,  Sunday  after  Sunday,  reiterates  the  teach- 
ings of  Channing,  this  unassuming  plebeian  from  over 
the  sea. 

It  seems  to  me  that  there  is  a  confusion  of  ideas,  in  some 
minds,  as  to  the  relation  of  religion  and  tJieology.  The  opin- 
ion seems  to  prevail  that  these  words  stand  for  one  and  the 
same  thing, —  that  they  are  inseparably  connected,  counter- 
parts of  each  other.  The  truth  is  they  stand  for  entirely 
different  things.  The  truth  is  that  reason,  logical  analysis, 
and  history  prove  them  to  be  the  deadly  enemies  of  each  other. 
The  truth  is  they  bear  no  more  relation  to  each  other 
than  the  light  of  the  little  fire-fiy  that  flits  before  the  vision 
on  a  summer's  eve  bears  to  the  light  of  the  eternal  star  that 
stands  sentinel  far  out  on  the  frontiers  of  creation.  Religion 
makes  people  love  one  another,  and  so  binds  them  together 
in  the  bonds  of  brotherhood  and  peace.  Theology  makes 
people  hate  one  another,  and  so  divides  them  into  hostile 
and  warring  factions  and  sects.  Religion  is  the  beautiful 
goddess  descending  from  the  skies,  clothed  in  robes  of  inno- 
cence and  charity  and  purity  and  truth.  TJieology  is  the 
scowling  and  wrinkled  Titan  that  comes  up  from  the  mud. 
Theology  is  the  dry  and  worthless  chaff  which  shrinks  and 
shrivels  and  starves  the  soul.  Religion  is  the  clean  golden 
wheat  from  which  we  may  all  of  us,  if  we  will,  obtain  the 
very  "bread  of  life."  Surv^ey  the  history  of  the  world,  and 
behold  the  black  and  bloody  devastation  following  in  the 
track  of  wars  caused  by  theological  dogmas  and  quibbles  ! 
We  are  almost  justified  in  denouncing  theology  as  an  enemy 


CELEBRATION    AT    ANN    ARBOR.  33 1 

of  the  human  race.  With  an  arrogant  and  a  superciHoiis  air, 
it  has  seized  infant  science  by  the  throat  and  attempted  to 
strangle  it ;  with  satanic  impudence,  it  has  seized  divine 
reason  by  the  throat  and  attempted  to  strangle  it  ;  with 
heartless  and  unparalleled  tyranny,  it  has  strangled  civil  and 
political  liberty  whenever  and  wherever  it  had  the  power.  I 
have  sometimes  thought  that  the  great  tragic  poet  of  Greece 
looked  forward  into  the  centuries,  and  with  an  inspired  pre- 
science saw  the  crimes  and  cruelties  engendered  by  theologi- 
cal hate,  and  personified  them,  when  he  described  those 
strange  and  loathsome  creatures,  drippnig  with  gore,  who 
crouched  at  midnight  in  mockery  of  worship  around  the  altar 
of  the  Eumenides.  Channing  clearly  saw  the  distinction 
between  the  religion  which  ^  is  natural,  eternal,  and  divine, 
and  the  theology  which  is  unnatural,  temporary,  and  human. 
Like  his  divine  Master,  he  taught  a  religion  which  does  not 
have  its  origin  in  any  book,  which  is  broader  than  any  creed 
or  race,  older  than  any  church,  a  religion  which  finds  a  natu- 
ral and  spontaneous  response  in  every  human  heart.  Herein 
is  the  secret  of  his  fame  and  influence.  He  taught  men  the 
inestimable  value  of  character  and  conduct.  He  taught  men 
that  there  is  no  spiritual  salvation  in  this  life  or  in  any  other 
life,  worth  anything,  except  salvation  from  sin,  and  that  the 
only  way  to  be  saved  from  sin  is  to  stop  sinning.  He  taught 
men  the  inspired  and  inspiring  truth  that,  if  they  would  live 
pure,  upright,  and  honorable  lives,  they  would  have  the  "king- 
dom of  heaven  in  their  hearts."  He  taught  that  all  man- 
kind everywhere  were  his  brothers  and  chiklren,  equally 
dear  to  the  same  heavenly  I'^athcr.  So  all  mankind  every- 
where, who  have  learned  his  character,  revere  his  memory 
with  a  fraternal  gratitude. 

The  Catholic  Church  cherishes  with  a  pious  enthusiasm 
the  n^emory  of  Thomas  a  Kempis,  who  wrote  the  liiiitatioii 
of  Christ.     Without  fear,  we  may  place  alongside  this  great 


332  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Catholic  writer  of  the  Middle  Ages  our  Charming  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  who  lived  thQ  "Imitation  of  Christ";  and 
when  we  think  of  his  pure,  unselfish,  and  noble  life,  devoted 
to  "  doing  good,"  and  to  the  improvement  and  elevation  of 
his  fellow-men,  we  feel  justified  in  applying  to  him  those 
words  which  the  breezes  of  Galilee  bore  upon  their  rejoicing 
wings  eighteen  centuries  ago  :  "  Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart, 
for  they  shall  see  God."  "  Bessed  are  the  peacemakers, 
for  they  shall  be  called  the  children  of  God."  "Blessed 
are  the  poor  in  spirit,  for  theirs  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven." 
And  when  we  consider  the  circumstances  of  his  ministry, 
which  we  will  not  repeat,  we  may  apply  to  him  that  other 
beatitude :  "  Blessed  are  ye  when  men  shall  revile  you,  and 
persecute  you,  and  say  all  manner  of  evil  against  you  falsely 
for  my  sake." 

We  shall  none  of  us  see  the  second  centenary  of  Chan- 
ning  ;  but  the  millions  who  will  then  swarm  upon  the  earth 
will  see  the  divine  religion  which  Jesus  and  Channing  taught, 
glorified  by  twenty  centuries  of  struggle  and  trial,  and  invin- 
cibly armed  at  last  by  reason  in  her  right  hand  and  science  in 
her  left,  going  forth  conquering  and  to  conquer,  banishing 
ignorance,  bigotry,  and  superstition  from  the  earth,  and 
elevating,  ennobling,  blessing  mankind. 

Addresses  were  also  made  by  Prof.  T.  P.  Wilson,  Mr. 
Anthony  Reynolds,  Prof.  B.  C.  Burt,  Prof.  Donald  McLean, 
Judge  Cooley,  and  Prof.  V.  C.  Vaughan.  Several  of  these 
addresses  were  quite  fully  reported  in  the  Ann  Arbor  Argus 
of  April  17,  which  also  contained  a  poem  by  George  Newell 
Lovejoy,  received  too  late  to  be  read  at  the  meeting. 


THE  CELEBRATION  AT  MADISON,  WIS. 


The  one-hundredth  birthday  of  Dr.  William  Ellery  Chan- 
ning,  the  father  of  modern  Unitarianisra  in  America,  was 
celebrated  at  Madison,  in  the  Jewish  synagogue,  by  the 
Unitarian  Society  of  this  city.  Addresses  were  read  by 
Rev.  H.  M.  Simmons  and  Prof.  W.  H.  Allen,  and  remarks 
made  by  Prof.  D.  B.  Frankenberger,  Hon.  H.  H.  Giles,  and 
Rev.  W.  E.  Wright.  The  exercises  were  of  an  exceed- 
ingly interesting  character.  The  attendance  was  not  large  ; 
but  the  company  was  principally  made  up  from  the  literary 
and  educational  circles  of  the  city,  and  entered  with  marked 
spirit  into  the  very  interesting  proceedings,  which  consisted 
of  music,  essays,  and  impromptu  remarks  of  a  character 
appropriate  to  the  occasion. 

The  music,  consisting  of  a  vocal  quintette, —  Mrs.  DeMoe, 
Misses  Giles  and  Norton,  and  Messrs.  Perkins  and  Wright, 
—  was  a  prominent  and  highly  creditable  feature. 

The  pulpit  was  profusely  decorated  with  foliage  and  flow- 
ering plants,  and  appropriate  mottoes  and  designs  in  ever- 
green adorned  the  wall. 

The  exercises  were  commenced  at  7.45  o'clock,  by  Rev. 
H.  M.  Simmons,  pastor  of  the  Unitarian  congregation,  who 
spoke  substantially  as  follows  :  — 

One  hundred  years  ago  to-day,  William  Ellery  Channing 


334  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

was  born  in  Newport,  R.I.  It  was  a  day  when  human 
ri<;hts  were  little  regarded  in  our  country,  even  though  the 
"Declaration  of  Independence"  had  just  been  proclaimed, 
and  the  Revolutionary  War  was  in  progress.  African  sla- 
very was  allowed,  and  seldom  rebuked ;  harshness  and  in- 
humanity in  many  forms  prevailed.  The  religious  freedom 
which  the  Pilgrims  came  to  establish  was  anything  but  free. 
New  England  still  had  its  Established  Church,  which  de- 
manded ta.xes  from  all  and  governed  all.  Still  less  free  and 
humane  was  its  theology.  Total  depravity  and  eternal  dam- 
nation were  taught  in  nearly  every  pulpit,  and  nearly  every 
Sunday.  Right  there  in  Newport,  when  and  where  Chan- 
ning  was  born,  Samuel  Hopkins  was  preaching  his  stern 
doctrines  that  man  is,  by  riature,  wholly  bad  ;  that  his  very 
efforts  after  virtue  deserve  the  divine  wrath,  and  only  in- 
crease his  guilt  and  condemnation  ;  that  he  cannot  be  saved, 
until  totally  converted,  and  willing  to  be  damned.  This 
gloomy  "Hopkinsian  Calvinism,"  as  it  was  called  after  him, 
was  the  prevalent  theology  of  New  England. 

What  a  change  the  century  has  seen  !  Slavery  has  been 
overthrown ;  humaner  feelings  everywhere  prevail ;  men  to- 
day worship  where  and  how  they  will ;  of  that  theology  but 
a  faint  echo  is  heard  in  the  most  orthodox  pulpit ;  and,  in 
nearly  all  churches,  that  religion  of  tyranny  and  terror  has 
given  way  to  the  gospel  of  liberty  and  love.  In  this  eman- 
cipation, Channing  has  been  a  conspicuous  worker,  and 
often  a  leader.  He  has  been  indeed  only  one  among  many 
workers  in  many  ways  ;  but,  as  William  C.  Gannett  says, 
"it  may  be  doubted  if  any  one  has  done  more  to  bring 
freedom  into  the  faith  and  keep  faith  amid  the  freedom." 
So  that  all  true  lovers  of  liberty  are  glad  to  honor  him 
to-day. 

Reading  his  life  to-day,,  we  almost  wonder  whence  this 
power  was.     We  find  few  striking  incidents, —  one  long  pas- 


CELEBRATION    AT    MADISON.  335 

torate  of  thirty-nine  years  in  Boston,  varied  with  public 
addresses  and  Hterary  work.  Physically,  frail,  weak,  small, 
—  "As  I  knew  him,"  says  Dr.  Bartol,  "scarcely  more  than  a 
hundred  pounds  of  flesh  clothed  and  served  in  him  the 
informing  soul."  His  speech  seldom,  if  ever,  rose  to  impas- 
sioned eloquence  ;  though  his  marvellous  voice,  sending  its 
gentlest  whispers  into  the  furthest  corners, —  called  by  Emer- 
son one  of  the  three  most  eloquent  he  has  heard,  reading 
into  Scriptures  and  hymns  "  more  than  I  could  afterward 
find  there," — always  hushed  an  audience.  His  style  was 
neither  brilliant  nor  incisive,  though  wonderfully  clear  and 
luminous.  He  was  not  famous  for  large  learning  nor  pro- 
found thought.  He  avoided  controversy ;  and  though  the 
acknowledged  leader  of  the  Unitarians  for  twenty  years,  and 
sometimes  taking  the  occasion  to  define  and  defend  Unita- 
rianism,  he  generally  kept  to  the  common  themes  of  life, 
practical  and  spiritual.  He  was  ever  calm  and  rather  con- 
servative, and  in  the  new  movement  of  thought,  just  at  the 
close  of  his  life,  did  not  quite  keep  step  with  Emerson,  Rip- 
ley, and  Parker.  We  almost  wonder  at  his  power.  Vet  it 
was  there.  He  had  a  rare  honesty  and  sincerity  of  thought 
and  statement, "a  lofty  seriousness  and  spirituality;  so  that, 
with  his  weak  body  and  unadorned  speech,  he  could  yet,  as 
Dr.  Hedge  said,  from  the  spiritual  height  on  which  he  stood, 
by  mere  dint  of  gravity'  {coming  from  such  an  clevatioii), 
send  his  word  into  the  soul  with  more  searching  force  than 
all  the  orators  of  his  time.  So  his  pulpit  became  the 
attractive  one  in  Boston ;  the  voice  from  that  frail  body 
echoed  through  all  New  England ;  his  words  have  spread 
through  most  of  the  languages  of  Europe,  and  are  circu- 
lated there  even  more  widely  than  in  America ;  and,  of  our 
English  edition,  fifty  thousand  coi^ies  are  said  to  have  been 
sold,  while  the  sale  of  the  centennial  edition,  just  published, 
is  expected  to  reach  one  hundred  thousand.     Nor  have  his 


33'''  CHANNING    CENTENARY, 

words  failed  to  bear  fruit.  All  admit  to-day  his  influence  in 
the  cause  of  temperance  and  anti-slavery.  Those  humaner 
doctrines  of  religion  he  preached  have  softened  theology 
throughout  the  land ;  his  thoughts  have  become  common- 
place in  the  liberal  pulpits,  and  are  heard  in  all  the  great 
orthodox  pulpits.  And  though  he  did  not  share  that  new 
movement  of  thought,  which  began  in  the  last  years  of  his 
life,  still  that  idea  which  he  said  was  the  central  one  of 
his  religion — the  greatness  and  divinity  of  the  soul  —  has 
been  the  inspiring  one  of  Parker  and  Emerson,  and  of  the 
highest  religious  thought  since. 

I  notice  that  this  April  7th  is  rich  in  the  number  and 
variety  of  the  great  men  it  has  produced.  To-day  is  also 
the  birthday  of  Xavier,  Wordsworth,  Fourier,  and  Rubini. 
But  Channing's  heart  was  warmed  with  a  devotion  as  deep 
as  Xavier's ;  Channing,  though  no  poet,  still  as  much  as 
Wordsworth,  loved  nature  both  in  the  sea  and  the  soul ; 
Channing  wrought  for  social  reform  more  truly  than  Fou- 
rier; and  Channing's  life,  so  attuned  to  reverence  and 
charity,  was  a  song  richer  and  sweeter  than  Rubini's  tenor. 
I  am  glad  so  many  people  in  Madison  have  met  to  honor 
him.  I  am  glad  we  have  met  in  this  Jewish  synagogue. 
For  no  American  more  than  Channing  has  reasserted  that 
doctrine  of  the  unity  of  God,  which  Jewish  writers,  both  of 
the  Old  Testament  and  the  New,  declared  ;  and  no  Ameri- 
can preacher  more  than  he  has  shown  that  charity  which 
should  bind  Jews  and  Christians  in  one  religion. 

Prof.  W.  F.  Allen,  being  then  announced,  spoke  at  some 
length  concerning  the  work  of  Dr.  Channing  in  influencing 
the  old  creeds  and  in  preparing  the  path  for  modern  free 
religious  thought.     He  said,  in  conclusion  :  — 

Channing's  theology  may  be  summed  up  into  three  w^ords, 
which  we  have  placed  upon  our  walls  :  Faith,  as  the  founda- 
tion of  all ;  Reason^  as  a  method  of  inquiry ;  Righteottsness, 


CELEBRATION    AT    MADISON.  337 

as  the  chief  object  of  effort.  The  whole  summed  up  is 
Unity,  the  fellowship  of  all  who  have  faith  in  right,  and  are 
willing  to  work  for  the  advancement  of  righteousness. 

The  movement  toward  Unity,  which  is  so  marked  a  feat- 
ure of  the  present  day,  belongs  in  large  part,  no  doubt,  to  a 
general  movement  of  the  age.  Mankind  has  outgrown  the 
old  intolerance  and  exclusiveness ;  and,  if  Channing  had  not 
proclaimed  this  gospel,  no  doubt  somebody  else  would  have 
proclaimed  it.  But  this  does  not  lessen  the  debt  we  owe  to 
Channing.  It  might  with  equal  truth  be  said  that,  if  Luther 
had  not  lived,  still  the  Reformation  would  have  come  in  due 
season.  We  are  grateful  to  the  men  through  whom  it  did 
come.  And  to  illustrate  how  completely  Channing's  agency 
in  this  work  is  recognized  outside  of  the  denomination,  and 
even  of  Protestantism,  I  will  read  some  extracts  from  a 
work  by  a  French  Catholic,  a  writer  who  absolutely  rejects 
Channing's  theology,  and  even  hesitates  to  call  him  a  Chris- 
tian, but  who  has  written  a  volume  of  nearly  three  hundred 
pages  to  make  him  known  to  his  countrymen,  in  the  hope 
that  a  strong  influence  for  good  may  be  exercised  where  it 
is  so  much  needed.  "  How  can  we  help,"  he  says,  "  wishing 
that  France  may  have  another  Channing,  as  radically  relig- 
ious, as  sincere  a  friend  of  progress,  as  tolerant,  as  good  a 
patriot,  as  free  from  party  spirit,  as  devoted  to  the  interests 
of  the  working  class,  as  determined  to  improve  its  moral 
and  material  condition  }  How  can  we  help  wishing  that  wc 
were  ourselves  working  to  understand  his  language  and 
follow  his  counsels }  .  .  .  The  author  of  these  lines  would 
believe  himself  abundantly  rewarded  for  his  labor  if,  by 
placing  in  a  clear  light  the  great  qualities  of  the  celebrated 
American  moralist,  he  could  aid  in  some  degree  to  allay  the 
political  and  social  hatreds  which  threaten  to  devour  France 
and  modern  society." 

Again:  "  Such  words  prove  by  themselves  the  beauty  of 

23 


3^8  CIIANNMNG    CKNTKNARY. 

Channing's  soul,  and  the  fervor  of  his  faith.  I  cannot  forget 
all  that  separates  him  from  the  Catholic  faith,  all  that  he 
lacks  to  have  a  right  to  the  title  of  Christian  ;  but,  u^hatever 
may  be,  in  this  regard,  my  differences  from  him,  God  forbid 
that  I  should  ever  see  anything  but  a  brother,  a  spiritual 
friend,  and  a  Nestor  in  the  Unitarian  minister  who  traced 
these  admirable  lines. 

"  He  may  not  be  a  Christian  by  belief :  he  is  already  one 
by  spirit  and  by  sentiment ;  and  we  cannot  forget  what  he 
constantly  reminds  us  of, —  that  a  Christian,  according  to  the 
gospel,  worships  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  Moreover,  we  do  not 
live  at  a  time  in  which  it  is  possible  to  make  an  issue  on 
such  an  article  of  the  creed.  We  have  to  do,  at  the  present 
time,  -with  something  very  different.  An  ardent,  stubborn 
contest,  of  unequalled  violence  and  ability,  has  been  excited 
against  the  very  innermost  idea  of  all  religion  and  philos- 
ophy. God  himself  is  attacked  and  denied.  In  the  pres- 
ence of  such  a  danger,  it  is  a  positive  duty  to  suspend  all 
purely  theological  debate,  and  confront  the  common  enemy. 
In  the  face  of  the  destroyers  of  all  morality,  all  society,  all 
science,  all  philosophy,  all  consolation  here  below,  all  hope 
beyond  the  tomb,  divisions  must,  if  not  disappear,  at  least  be 
softened  down." 

Prof.  D.  B.  Frankenberger,  being  called  upon,  spoke  of  the 
different  manner  in  which  birthdays  were  celebrated,  say- 
ing that  appropriateness  should  always  be  observed.  Upon 
the  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  the  nation,  we  indulge  in 
rockets  and  smoke  and  powder;  upon  Washington's  birth- 
day, we  have  flaunting  flags,  parading  troops,  and  military 
insignia  everywhere  prevalent,  to  remind  us  of  the  warlike 
grandeur  of  the  Father  of  the  Republic ;  but,  when  we  cel- 
ebrate the  birth  of  a  great  moral  hero,  like  Channing, 
flowers  and  songs  and  music  and  literary  communion  are 
appropriate.     Channing  was  the  power  which  rendered  mod- 


CELEBRATION    AT    MADISON.  339 

ern  liberalism  possible.  He  was  not  an  ultra  thinker:  he 
preached  what  might  be  termed  orthodox  Congregationalism 
to-day ;  but  he  was  as  much  in  advance  of  the  faith  of  his 
day  as  is  now  the  most  ultra  thinker  in  advance  of  present 
orthodoxy.  Because  Channing  was  not  as  advanced  as  are 
the  Unitarians  now  is  no  reason  why  he*  should  not  be  up- 
held as  a  prophet  of  advanced  religious  freedom ;  for  he 
thought  for  himself,  and  led  others  out  of  spiritual  bondage, 
even  if  he  did  not  lead  them  so  very  far  away,  at  a  time 
when  advance  in  such  matters  meant  the  loss  of  popularity, 
the  hatred  of  the  average  Christian.  Channing's  power  lay 
in  his  spirituality.  He  moved  by  the  force  of  bis  character, 
the  power  of  his  soul.  As  it  was  fabled  that  the  hunter,  by 
dipping  his  bullet  in  his  own  blood,  could  never  fail  of  hitting 
his  game,  so  did  Channing  drive  home  the  charmed  bullet  of 
truth  to  every  heart, —  he  was  so  alive  with  his  subject,  his 
argumentative  missile  was  so  steeped  in  his  own  heart-blood, 
so  much  a  part  of  his  own  soul.  He  broke  loose  from  the 
cumbersome  restrictions  of  creed;  he  wanted  no  heaven 
made  with  hands ;  he  sought  the  open  air  and  universal 
sunlight. 

His  power  was  in  his  honesty  of  intellect,  in  his  idea  of 
the  dignity  of  human  intellect.  To-day  there  is  no  vice  so 
prevalent  as  dishonesty  in  matters  of  belief, —  as,  in  all  tran- 
sition periods,  men  are  always  trying  to  get  under  some 
particular  banner  that  shall  lead  them  to  victory.  But 
Channing  was  a  man  who  stepped  out  and  from  under,  not 
wanting  to  be  trammelled  ;  and,  for  his  honesty  and  inde- 
pendence, he  became  unpopular,  almost  hated  by  the  secta- 
rians. 

Prof.  Frankenberger  said  that  he  did  not  know  whether 
a  second  Channing  centennial  would  be  celebrated  or  not. 
But  he  thought  that  the  general  truths  asserted  by  Chan- 
ning would  become  universal,  those  common  to  our  Iniman- 


340  CHANNING    CENTENARY, 

ity  will  live  and  cluster  around  his  name.  Channing's  works 
are  translated  into  nearly  every  tongue,  and  are  every- 
where having  their  influence.  Each  germ  once  planted 
cannot  be  uprooted,  and  the  time  will  come  when  tlie  re- 
freshing shade  of  the  princi})les  of  man's  brotherhood  and 
God's  fatherhood  will  be  sought  by  all  men.  It  matters 
little  whether  Channing's  name  be  associated  with  it :  the 
truth  will  remain,  and  forever  grow. 

Rev.  W.  E.  Wright  succeeded  Prof.  Frankenberger.  Mr. 
Wright  suggested  that  perhaps  the  place  of  Channing's  birth 
—  by  the  seashore,  in  sight  of  the  great,  broad  ocean  — 
might  have  had  some  influence  in  shaping  the  character  of 
the  great  leader,  some  tendency  to  awaken  in  him  the  pro- 
phetic mind.  His  theme  was  the  fatherhood  of  God  and 
the  brotherhood  of  man ;  and  he  preached  upon  it  with 
unabated  enthusiasm.  He  was  a  great  man,  a  grand  soul : 
this  was  the  secret  of  his  power  to  move  men.  His  influ- 
ence was  wide-spread,  and  growing,  and  Mr.  Wright  called 
especial  attention  to  the  fact  that,  even  in  far-off  India,  his 
works  were  translated  into  the  native  tongue,  and  read  with 
keen  interest. 

Hon.  H.  H.  Giles  was  the  last  speaker  of  the  evening. 
Mr.  Giles  had  some  recollection,  he  said,  of  those  early 
times  when  Channing  was  alive  and  about  his  great  work. 
In  those  days,  the  great  leader  was  held  up  as  a  very  dan- 
gerous man,  whose  teachings  uprooted  all  kinds  of  religious 
faith.  Yet  to-day  Channing's  doctrines,  with  one  or  two 
exceptions,  constitute  the  very  platform  of  the  liberal  ortho- 
dox churches.  In  spite  of  the  bitter  attacks  made  upon  him 
by  the  Puritan  pulpits  of  forty  years  ago,  very  few  orthodox 
preachers  of  this  day  would  venture  to  controvert  the  posi- 
tions then  assumed  by  Channing.  He  stood,  a  half  century 
ago,  as  the  representative  of  intellectual  freedom  :  he  was 
the   father   of   advanced    thought    in    America.     And    that 


CELEBRATION    AT    MADISON,    ,  34I 

freedom  is  to-day  acknowledged  all  over  Christendom,  in 
every  creed ;  and  that  thought  has  become  the  accepted 
doctrine  of  to-day.  Mr.  Simmons  read  an  anecdote  illus- 
trating the  precocity  of  Channing,  and  then,  after  music  by 
the  choir, —  which  had  also  interspersed  the  proceedings, — 
declared  the  memorial  exercises  at  an  end. 


TlIK  CELEBRATION  AT  CINCINNATI. 


Two  great  meetings  were  held  in  Cincinnati  on  Sunday, 
April  4,  the  Unitarian  and  Univcrsalist  congregations  crowd- 
ing the  Unitarian  Church  (Rev.  C.  W.  Wendte's)  in  the 
morning,  and  the  Universalist  Church  (Rev.  J.  H.  Hart- 
ley's) in  the  evening.  The  former  was  richly  decorated 
with  flowers,  the  two  pastors  sharing  the  exercises.  After 
music  and  a  reading  from  Channing,  Mr.  Wendte  told 
briefly  the  story  of  Dr.  Channing's  life,  after  which  the  peo- 
ple heard  with  delight  a  discourse  by  Rev.  William  R.  Alger, 
of  which  the  Covnnercial  gave  the  following  outline  :  — 

By  celebrating  the  memory  of  great  men,  their  spiritual 
presence  is  kept  alive.  How  much  of  that  knowledge  and 
thought,  of  that  sentiment  and  sympathy,  which  constitute 
the  costlier  parts  of  an  acquired  experience,  is  bestowed  by 
gifted  men  who  were  the  pioneers,  instructors,  refiners,  and 
ordainers  of  their  times  !  What  would  induce  the  people 
of  Switzerland  to  have  William  Tell  removed  from  their 
annals,  and  the  spots  his  deeds  immortalized  taken  from 
their  soil  ^  Is  not  the  verdure  of  spring  greener,  the  rose 
more  beautiful,  the  warble  of  birds  more  delicious,  because 
the  poets  have  gazed  and  worshipped,  and  passed  them 
through  their  hearts  .-'  Is  not  Thermopylae  a  beacon-fire, 
blazing  courage  and  exultation  through  the  wide  night  of 
time,  because  there  Leonidas  and  his  three  hundred  threw 
themselves  into  the  sea  of    Persians  that  Sparta  might   be 


CELEBRATION    AT    CINCINNATI.  343 

saved?  What  an  incalculable  loss  from  our  inner  wealth 
would  we  experience,  what  a  blank  left  in  our  souls,  if  all 
the  starry  names  now  studding  the  mental  firmament  were 
struck  away,  all  the  inspiring  instructions  of  departed  genius 
banished  ! 

To  appreciate  the  exalted  traits  of  great  men  is  to  show  by 
this  recognition  that  kindred  elements  are  in  us.  There  is 
naturally  a  gradation  of  the  spiritual  scale  of  qualities.  It  is 
a  duty  for  everything  below  to  pay  homage  to  everything 
above  itself.  That  variously  modified  hero-worship  which 
has  followed  man  to  every  nook  and  isle  is  the  gratification 
of  this  natural  instinct. 

Handing  down  with  faith,  appreciation,  and  eulogy  the 
histories  of  men  of  distinguished  deserts,  kindles  in  us  the 
noblest  aspirations  after  excellence. 

But  as  a  most  important  use  of  a  true  commemoration 
with  the  spirits  and  histories,  with  the  greatest  and  the 
best  of  our  race,  the  chief  justification  for  paying  them  the 
homage  of  public  honors  and  fresh  appreciation  is  that 
we  thus  lift  up  before  the  community  higher  ideals  for 
popular  adoration  to  fasten  on  and  for  popular  ambition 
to  copy.  There  is  no  educational  or  moral  force  in  society 
so  effective  as  the  ideals  chosen,  in  constant  contemplation, 
to  direct  the  energies  of  other  aspirants.  That  which  any 
strong  and  earnest  person  most  admires  in  another  marks 
what  he  most  desires  to  be  in  himself.  The  superior  whom 
we  worship  guides  and  influences  and  moulds  our  characters 
more  than  any  other  single  free  power.  The  vulgar  ideals 
which  allure  and  govern  the  common  crowd  of  men  are  the 
conspicuous  examples  of  success  in  those  rules  of  selfishness, 
social  prominence,  wealth,  luxury,  power,  honor,  which  are 
the  strong  average  ambitions.  These  scarcely  need  to  be 
multiplied  or  strengthened. 

But  when,  after  a  hundred  years  are  gone,  the  character 


344  ClIANNING    CKNTENARY. 

and  the  examiile  of  a  jmre  and  noble  man  still  shine  out  con- 
spicuously, and  he  is  remembered  with  a  loving  regard,  as  one 
who  represented  the  grandest  type  of  humanity, —  a  lawyer 
who  strove  for  justice  more  than  success  ;  a  statesman  who 
subordinated  self  and  party  to  country,  and  country  to  man- 
kind ;  an  orator  or  a  philosopher  who  cultivated  his  gifts, 
not  as  a  means  of  shining  and  feeding  his  vanity,  but  to  fit 
himself  to  be  an  instrument  of  God  in  doing  good  ;  a  man 
who  lived  supremely  to  acquire  truth  and  diffuse  benefi- 
cence,—  then  when  the  people  come  spontaneously  forward 
to  crown  his  memory  with  fame  and  praise,  they  give  the 
sanction  of  public  opinion  to  the  divine  ideals  of  life.  They 
give  to  that  ideal  a  new  charm  and  intensity  of  appeal. 
They  clothe  it  with  a  more  inspiring  fascination  to  draw 
disciples  and  imitators. 

As  a  rule,  it  is  out  of  the  actuals  of  eminent  conquerors  or 
heroes  that  common  men  make  their  ideals  ;  and  it  is  thus 
that  the  vice  and  crime  of  the  hostile  struggle  of  society  are 
prolonged.  Oh,  if  the  divine  ideals  could  be  popularized  as 
the  genuine  inspiration  and  desire  of  the  whole  world ! 

The  final  ideal  will  not  be  made  up  of  the  actuals  of  any  : 
it  will  arise  from  a  consensus  of  the  true  insights  and  aspi- 
rations of  all  harmonized  and  perfected  criticism. 

In  order  really  to  gain  from  the  great  men  of  the  past  the 
divine  uses  which  they  are  meant  to  bestow,  we  must  not  be 
content  blindly  to  worship  them,  and  mechanically  repeat  the 
formulas  they  have  bequeathed.  We  must  personally  study 
to  get  at  the  secrets  of  their  greatness,  and  apply  the  same 
principles  and  methods  to  ourselves.  All-important  as  this 
truth  is,  it  is  not  commonly  practised.  The  degradation  and 
bane  of  the  average  multitude  is  their  gregarious  conformity 
to  what  is  established,  their  slavish  and  unthinking  routine. 
Every  great  man  shatters  this  dead  crust  of  custom,  spurns 
this  ignominious  yoke  of  authority,  and  with  audacious  orig- 


CELEBRATION    AT    CINCINNATI.  345 

inality  employs  his  own  faculties  to  lead  a  fresh,  free  life  of 
his  own  under  the  spirit  of  God.  This,  in  every  instance,  is 
the  dynamic  lesson  of  their  inspiration  to  every  one  who 
would  emulate  their  glory.  Only  one  in  a  million  appears 
capable  of  learning  this  lesson.  All  the  rest  either  gaze  in 
stupid  wonder  without  a  thought  of  attempting  to  become 
like  them,  or  else  are  subdued  into  mechanical  disciples, 
mumbling  ritualistic  repetitions  of  words  and  forms,  instead 
of  reproducing  in  endless  variety  the  living  genius  of  the 
Master. 

A  large  congregation  of  the  two  societies  filled  the  First 
Universalist  Church  in  the  evening.  Mr.  Hartley  read  selec- 
tions from  Dr.  Channing's  writings.  Rev.  C.  W.  Wendte, 
in  his  remarks  on  the  "Brotherhood  of  Man,"  recalled  how 
great  as  a  philanthropist  was  Channing ;  that,  above  all 
things,  he  was  the  Friend,  in  a  high  sense  of  the  word.  He 
was  interested  in  temperance  work.  He  took  an  active  inter- 
est in  prisoners,  and  in  pointing  them  to  hopes  of  personal 
regeneration  of  character.  We  should  take  Channing's  life 
into  our  own,  and  be  moved  by  the  many  high  motives,  that 
when  men  went  to  the  polls  to  vote  to-morrow  they  should 
vote  from  principle,  and  strive  to  put  good,  honest,  pure  men 
into  office. 

Rev.  W.  R.  Alger  spoke  of  the  dignity  of  human  nature 
in  remarks  characterized  by  his  fine  insight  and  profound 
thought. 

Rev.  J.  H.  Hartley  felt  it  a  matter  of  congratulation  that 
these  two  bo"dies  of  Christians  should  thus  unite,  that  it  had 
been  to  him  a  very  happy  Sunday,  and  before  another  Chan- 
ning centennial  should  have  come  he  ho[)ed  many  Christian 
bodies  would  thus  be  united. 

The  exercises  were  gratifying  to  both  congregations,  and 
there  will  not  soon  be  forgotten  the  Sunday  celebration  in 
this  memorial  service  of  Channin<r. 


TIIK  CELKBRATIOX  AT  SAX  FRANCISCO. 


At  the  Unitarian  Church,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Horatio  Stebbins 
delivered  the  following  discourse:  — 

It  matters  little  where  a  man  whose  thought  and  spirit  are 
as  universal  as  humanity  was  born,  or  by  what  particular 
earthly  circumstances  he  was  surrounded.  His  being  is 
chiefly  unfolded  from  within,  and  not  from  without;  and, 
according  to  his  moral  and  spiritual  greatness,  the  breadth 
and  universality  of  his  symj^athies,  his  earthly  accidents  are 
unimportant  —  the  vanishings  and  fallings-off  of  mortal  his- 
tory. The  point  at  which  our  interest  culminates  is  in  the 
relation  he  sustained  to  the  mind  of  his  period,  and  to  those 
great  human  and  divine  principles  that  pervade  all  periods. 

Channing  was  born  twenty-two  years  after  the  death  of 
Jonathan  Edwards,  that  Coryphaeus  of  American  Calvinism, 
who  had  written  himself  upon  the  theologic  mind  of  the 
country  in  its  prerevolutionary  period.  It  was  amid  the 
noise  and  tumult  and  fortitude  and  despair  6f  a  political 
revolution, —  a  new  impulse  of  the  Protestant  Reformation 
in  the  New  World,  carried  on  through  seven  years  of  fluct- 
uating fortunes  of  war.  It  was  a  period  of  transition,  when 
the  principles  of  the  sixteenth  century  were  beginning  to  be 
darkly  felt  in  the  blood  of  men  here  on   this  oldest  of  the 


CELEBRATION    AT    SAN    FRANCISCO.  347 

continents,  which  Providence  had  reserved  to  be  the  field  of 
the  newest  liberty.  Channing  was  born  into  a  new  age, — 
an  age  in  which  civil  and  religious  liberty  were  to  take  a 
new  form  and  a  new  spirit.  No  true  idea  of  his  place,  his 
character,  his  influence,  can  be  got  without  recognizing  this 
great  fact  of  time  and  Providence.  No  man  makes  an  age 
or  a  period.  No  solitary  effort  avails  anything.  Intellectual 
and  moral  gravitation  must  be  with  it, —  the  time,  the  now. 
It  is  said,  "The  time  finds  the  man."  Doubtless,  that  is 
true,  if  the  man  is  there.  If  we  mean  by  "the  time"  any 
particular  period  of  human  stress  or  need,  when  guidance  is 
the  instant  demand,  or  "  the  common  soul"  needs  a  voice, 
there  are  many  "times"  that  do  not  find  the  man.  And  it 
may  not  be  the  man's  fault,  inasmuch  as  he  cannot  see.  To 
appreciate  what  is  near,  to  see  that  now  is  the  great  day,  the 
day  of  salvation,  is  the  peculiar  gift  of  a  few  rare  spirits,  to 
whom  the  light  of  truth  is  not  refracted  by  distance.  To 
ordinary  minds  there  is  nothing  great  that  is  not  remote. 
"  Is  not  this  the  carpenter's  son  .?  "  The  individual  soul 
that  feels  and  knows  that  powers  of  truth  are  coming  forth 
and  maturing  in  him  which  shall  voice  the  common  heart 
and  mind  when  the  common  heart  and  mind  are  awakened, 
that  sees  the  first  tokens  of  a  new  day  upon  the  mountains 
of  its  own  spirit,  and  heralds  the  coming  light, —  that  is  the 
inspired  genius,  that  is  awakened  not  by  noise  without,  but 
by  whispers  within  ;  and,  while  tlie  time  finds  him,  he  finds 
the  time  also,  and  unconscious,  it  may  be,  of  his  own  great- 
ness, speaks  for  the  future  when  he  utters  the  simple  con- 
victions of  his  own  spirit;  Channing's  experience,  his  con- 
victions, his  opinions,  his  aspirations,  were  a  growth.  They 
were  the  result  of  the  workings  of  a  genius,  imbued  with  in- 
tellectual and  moral  light  and  love,  upon  the  materials  which 
Providence  provides  for  such  a  being.  He  discerned  the 
good,  the  best;  and  his   being  increased  by  that  which  nour- 


34^  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

ishod  it.  Ills  mind  did  not  wear  the  cap  of  liberty;  but 
his  soul  was  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  it,  and  he  conceived 
truth  to  be  the  only  freedom.  He  avoided  things  not  true 
by  a  sure  instinct  of  his  moral  nature,  as  domestic  animals 
in  the  pasture  avoid  poisonous  grasses.  He  did  not  re- 
nounce Calvinism,  but  went  by  it,  and  was  as  free  from  it 
as  if  he  had  lived  in  the  second  century  or  been  a  fisher- 
man on  the  sea  of  Galilee.  He  discerned  and  appreciated 
the  good  there  was  in  it,  and  loved  and  honored  the  good 
men  that  were  reared  in  it ;  but  he  saw  from  the  rectitude 
of  his  own  moral  nature  the  fundamental  fallacy  of  it  as  a 
way  of  thinking  about  man  and  God  and  destiny.  Thus,  at 
the  start,  we  have  an  important  element  of  his  greatness  and 
power.  He  thought  and  wrote  and  spoke  from  his  own  ex- 
perience and  from  the  level  of  his  own  mind.  There  is 
nothing  so  mighty  on  earth  as  the  individual  soul  filled 
with  the  spirit  of  truth  and  completely  thorough  in  its 
inward  life  and  thought. 

In  Tennyson's  drama  of  Queen  Mary,  he  makes  one  of  his 
characters  say, — 

"  Yet  thoroughly  to  believe  in  one's  own  self, 
So  one's  own  self  be  thorough,  were  to  do 
Great  things,  my  Lord." 

That  defines  and  contains  all  the  moral  grandeur  of  indi- 
vidual being,  and  is  the  secret  of  that  personal  greatness 
through  which  the  world  receives  its  chief  inspirations.  It 
was  the  secret  of  Christ's  self-possessed  soul,  and  by  it  he 
said,  "I  am  the  truth,"  Of  this  greatness,  Channing  was  a 
conspicuous  example.  He  felt  the  power  of  truth  within, 
and  felt  his  being  move  in  the  rhythm  of  divine  law  and 
love,  and  thoroughly  believed  in  himself  because  himself  was 
thorough.  Thus  the  new  age  of  spiritual  liberty  and  human- 
ity had  its  best  exponent  in  him.     Thus  the  time  found  him 


CELEBRATION    AT    SAN    FRANCISCO.  349 

When  we  read  the  accounts  of  those  who  saw  and  heard 
him,  who  were  capable  of  interpreting  the  occasion  and 
describing  the  subtle  influences  that  produced  such  moral 
effects  on  those  fitted  to  receive  them,  we  are  inclined  at  first 
to  say  that  these  are  the  qualities  of  the  living  person, — 
his  material  presence,  his  voice,  his  countenance,  his  eye, — 
and  his  name  and  influence  are  the  name  and  influence  of  a 
popular  orator,  that  time  obliterates  with  remorseless  hand  ; 
and  thus  we  should  only  repeat  the  verdict  of  time  and  his- 
tory pronounced  on  all  merely  extemporaneous  powers.  But 
it  was  not  so.  Inspired  as  he  was,  wonderful  as  was  his 
mortal  presence  transformed  to  a  spiritual  body,  his  voice 
breathing  upon  all  that  was  sublime  or  beautiful,  touching  or 
tender,  in  his  theme,  like  the  winds  of  heaven  among  the 
strings  of  a  harp,  he  still  was  not  a  popular  preacher,  nor 
had  he  a  great  following.  He  was  so  far  above  the  ordinary 
thinking  of  his  time,  his  mind  and  heart  and  soul  and  spirit 
moved  on  a  plane  so  elevated  that  the  earth-bound  wings  of 
common  human  sympathies  could  not  beat  the  rarefied  air  in 
which  he  breathed.  He  was  felt  to  be  great  by  those  who 
were  able  to  come  near  him  and  be  touched  by  sympathy  of 
moral  grandeur;  and  he  had  a  great  reputation  among  the 
few,  but  he  had  no  common  notoriety.  Those  who  know  him 
only  through  the  traditions  of  his  unique  personality  would 
be  very  naturally  led  to  the  conclusion  that  his  reputation 
and  influence  were  merely  cotemporary,  and  lived,  like  the 
name  of  a  popular  orator,  in  the  breath  that  fanned  its  tran- 
sient flame.  His  broad  human  sympathies ;  his  supernal 
heights  of  attainable  good  for  mankind  ;  his  profound  trem- 
bling reverence  for  human  nature  amid  the  ordinary  and 
humble  conditions  of  human  life,  where  common  men  see 
only  the  discouraging  facts  of  human  character ;  his  near-by 
and  present  realization  of  immortality  in  his  own  conscious- 
ness of  indwelling  life, —  these  were  more  than  men  could 


3$0  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

enter  into  fully,  and  they  knew  not  what  he  said.  For  this 
reason  he  is  mueh  better  understood  and  more  widely  felt 
now  than  in  his  own  time,  and  he  will  be  much  better  un- 
derstood in  time  to  come.  Not  that  he  will  be  the  conspicu- 
ous figure  of  human  thought ;  for  the  success  of  great  princi- 
ples absorbs  the  men  who  first  promulgate  them,  and  they 
are  lost  to  view  in  the  splendor  of  increasing  truth,  as  the  sun 
rising  over  the  eastern  mountains"  attracts  our  wonder  more 
than  when  from  noonday  height  he  sends  abroad  his  fervid 
beams  and  fills  the  world  with  glory.  But,  when  I  say  that 
Channing  will  be  better  understood  and  appreciated  in  the 
future,  I  mean  that  his  method  of  thinking,  his  way  of  look- 
ing at  the  human  world,  at  man's  relations  and  destiny 
under  God,  will  be  the  common  inheritance  of  men,  the 
common  air  of  human  feeling,  and  the  common  light  of 
human  guidance. 

It  seems  almost  unimportant  to  inquire,  concerning  such 
a  man  as  he  was,  what  was  the  rank  of  his  intellectual 
powers.  His  whole  being  was  so  suffused  with  moral  and 
spiritual  light  that  to  inquire  for  his  intellectual  gifts  is  like 
calling  for  candles  when  the  sun  shines.  It  is  true  that  sim- 
ple moral  excellence,  goodness,  is  not  enough.  There  must 
be  intellectual  strength.  But  mere  intellectual  strength 
is  not  enough  to  conduct  to  new  discoveries  in  the  realm  of 
truth.  Unless  the  intellect  is  as  honest  as  the  conscience, 
and  as  pure  as  the  pure  heart,  then  the  light  within  is  dark- 
ness, and  strength  is  blind.  Never  was  a  man's  intellect 
so  inseparable  from  his  moral  being,  and  the  rays  of  truth 
suffered  no  refraction  in  his  mind.  Channing  had  that  last 
accomplishment,  the  genius  of  virtue  :  he  was  intellectually 
honest.  In  all  his  writings  there  is  not  a  single  word  in 
which  there  is  a  shadow  of  intellectual  trick  or  advantage, 
or  crowding  the  argument,  or  pushing  language  to  the  verge 
of  meaning,  but  a  calm,  gentle,  mighty  stream,  pouring  on 


CELEBRATION    AT    SAN    FRANCISCO.  35  I 

with  the  momentum  of  truth.  It  is  this  quality  of  intellect- 
ual purity  that  makes  the  mind  mediator  between  God  and 
man.     This  is  the  "whole  body  full  of  light." 

If,  however,  we  inquire  for  the  peculiar  quality  and  rank 
of  his  intellect,  if  it  was  not  the  highest  known  to  human 
endowment,  it  was,  nevertheless,  very  high.  He  was  the 
first  writer  of  his  time  upon  themes  of  great  human  inter- 
est; and,  if  we  take  the  most  distinguished  examples  of  his 
writings,  we  cannot  fail  to  see  that  he  spoke  not  for  a  time 
or  a  party,  but  for  man  and  time.  For  comprehensiveness, 
discrimination,  and  penetration,  he  could  have  had  few  con- 
temporary equals,  and  his  style  is  so  luminous  that  it  needs 
no  illustration.  I  think  if  any  intelligent  man  will  read 
Channing's  letter  to  Henry  Clay,  and  then  read  anything 
that  remains  of  Clay's  writings  or  speeches,  he  must  feel  the 
vast  superiority  of  Channing's  mind  over  that  of  the  pop- 
ular, fascinating,  and  beloved  orator  of  Kentucky.  I  think, 
if  any  man  will  explore  the  terrible  logic  of  Mr.  Calhoun, 
and  note  the  strands  of  steel  with  which  he  wove  his  ar- 
gument, and  then  turn  to  the  Baltimore  sermon,  woven 
with  threads  of  light  and  tinged  with  moral  glory,  he  must 
feel  that  the  statesman  compares  with  the  preacher  as  the 
almanac  compares  with  the  Bible.  No  statesman,  no  phi- 
losopher of  contemporary  fame,  had  a  clearer,  more  compre- 
hensive view  of  the  nature  and  tendencies  of  our  govern- 
ment. No  writer  in-  Christendom  had  such  an  insight  into 
the  causes  and  tendencies  of  the  French  Revolution,  or  so 
transfixed  with  his  pen  upon  the  walls  of  time  that  paragon 
of  self-will.  Napoleon.  But  we  are  not  interested  in  the 
mighty  spirits  of  the  race  presented  in  fragments.  They 
stand  as  a  whole  in  the  unity  and  fulness  of  their  being, 
and  shine  in  the  glory  from  which  they  are  derived. 

It  is  said  in  some  quarters  that  Channing's  influence  is 
declining.    What  can  be  meant  by  that  .-•    If  anybody  would  go 


35-  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

to  the  root  of  the  matter,  and  inquire  and  know  for  himself, 
let  him  ask,  W'hat  were  the  great  insi)iring  ideas  and  princi- 
ples of  his  mind  ?  Where  did  he  begin  ?  He  began  with 
Man.  He  started  with  the  nature  of  Man  instead  of  the 
jisychology  of  God.  It  was  another  way  of  looking  at  the 
universe,  as  distinctly  different  from  the  old  theologic 
method  as  the  Copernican  system  is  from  the  Ptolemaic.  It 
superseded  the  old  method,  as  the  modern  engine  super- 
sedes the  mail-coach.  The  vast,  clumsy,  mechanical  scheme 
of  redemption  was  not  needed  to  regulate  the  relations  of 
the  heavenly  Father  with  his  earthly  children.  Reason,  con- 
science, affection,  the  inspiration  of  God  in  man,  rejected  it. 
This  is  a  wa}'  of  thinking  that  belongs  not  to  a  creed  or  a 
time,  but  to  universal  human  nature  and  the  divine  relations 
of  man.  This  is  a  great  way  of  thinking.  It  is  a  world  way, 
it  is  a  mankind  way;  and  it  will  go  on  while  man  remains  or 
God  endures.  If  anybody  thinks  it  is  coming  to  an  end, 
he  makes'  a  great  mistake.  You  might  as  well  pull  the 
sunbeams  out  of  the  day  by  the  roots.  There  is  nowhere 
to  stand  and  nowhere  to  get  hold.  It  is  a  presence  in 
everything  that  has  any  alliance  with  man  ;  and  it  attends  his 
fortunes,  as  the  good  angel  of  his  progress.  It  is  a  style  of 
intellectual  and  moral  life,  a  process  after  the  manner  of  the 
spirit  of  God,  and  not  a  concluded  fact.  All  things  belong 
to  it.  The  past  is  its  possession,  the  bright  present  is  its 
own,  and  the  unrevealed  glories  of  the  future  are  committed 
to  its  trust. 


OTHER  CELEBRATIONS. 


So  FAR  as  can  be  learned,  appropriate  notice  of  the  occa- 
sion seems  to  have  been  taken  by  nfearly  every  Unitarian 
church  in  America,  and  by  many  others.  But  of  most  of 
these  celebrations  only  a  mere  mention  was  made  by  the 
local  press  ;  and  only  partial  success  has  attended  the  effort 
to  collect  reports  of  the  meetings  in  the  smaller  cities  and 
towns.  In  most  cases  nothing  more  was  attempted  than  to 
give  the  ordinary  church  services  of  either  the  Sunday  pre- 
ceding or  the  Sunday  following  the  centennial  day  a  memo- 
rial character.  In  a  few  places,  however,  a  special  meeting 
was  held  on  the  eve  or  day  of  April  7,  and  at  nearly  all  these 
meetings  the  speakers  included  representatives  of  various 
religious  denominations. 

Great  pains  seem  to  have  been  taken  to  make  the  cele- 
brations in  all  respects  worthy  of  the  occasion.  The  hymns 
and  anthems  sung,  the  passages  of  Scripture  read,  the 
prayers  offered,  the  sermons  preached,  the  good  taste  dis- 
played in  the  decoration  of  the  churches, —  all  bore  witness 
to  a  deep  and  wide-spread  feeling  that  nothing  but  the  best, 
the  truest,  the  purest,  the  simplest,  must  be  offered  in  com- 
memoration of  the  life  and  influence  of  a  man  so  elevated  in 
his  spirit  as  Channing.     The  general  testimony  of  the  press 


^54  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

is   that    the  services,  if    not  always  largely  attended,  were 
almost  invariably  of  a  high  order  of  excellence. 

Word  has  come  to  the  editor  of  celebrations  held  in  the 
following  cities  and  towns  :  — 

Greenfield,  Mass. —  A  meeting  more  notable  for  quality 
than  for  quantity  was  held,  April  8  {Fast  Day),  in  the  Uni- 
tarian church,  at  which  inspiring  addresses  were  given  by 
ministers  from  various  towns  in  the  Connecticut  Valley. 
The  Gazette  says:  "Mr.  Moors  read  an  address  upon  the 
religious  and  theological  condition  of  the  New  England 
churches  at  the  opening  of  this  century,  and  sketched  the 
causes  which  led  to  the  division  of  the  Congregational 
Church  into  Trinitarian  and  Unitarian.  He  extolled  Chan- 
ning's  agency  in  this  work,  and  gloried  in  his  widely  extend- 
ing influence  in  all  the  world.  Mr.  Flagg,  of  Bernardston, 
followed  in  an  earnest  talk  upon  the  early  and  entire  conse- 
cration of  Channing  to  God's  service.  Mr.  Moors  then  read 
a  brief  paper  of  '  Reminiscences  of  Channing,'  prepared  by 
the  venerable  Mr.  Smith,  now  nearly  ninety-one  years  old, 
which  showed  that  his  mental  vigor  was  not  abated.  Mr. 
Green,  of  Brattleboro',  read  a  paper  upon  Channing  as  a 
Theologian,  and  Mr.  Parsons,  of  Athol,  upon  Channing  as 
a  Scholar.  A  collation  was  served  in  the  parish  parlor,  and 
the  afternoon  session  was  opened  by  an  essay  by  Mr.  Hey- 
wood,  of  Holyoke,  on  Channing  as  a  Reformer,  and  was 
followed  by  another  by  Mr.  Ferry,  of  Northampton,  on 
Channing  Unitarianism.  Mr.  Porter,  of  Chicopee,  spoke 
upon  the  duty  of  the  Church  of  to-day  in  carrying  out  Chan- 
ning's  great  ideas.  Mr.  Buckingham,  of  Deerfield,  spoke  of 
Channing's  love  of  nature,  of  his  sympathy  with  the  poor, 
and  of  the  cross  he  bore  for  his  anti-slavery  position.  Mr. 
Waite,  of  Orange,  expressed  the  indebtedness  of  the  Uni- 
vcrsalists  to  Channing,  and  the  hope  of  a  cordial  sympathy 


OTHER    CELEBRATIONS.  355 

between  the  two  branches  of  the  Liberal  Church.  The 
papers  and  speeches  were  carefully  prepared,  and  full  of  ear- 
nest and  uplifting  thought." 

AsHBY,  Mass. —  A  meeting  was  held  on  Wednesday  even- 
ing, April  7,  in  the  Unitarian  church  ;  and  Rev.  Joshua 
Young,  of  Groton,  gave  a  fine  address  on  the  "  Life  and 
Influence  of  Channing." 

Springfield,  Mass. —  Appropriate  services  were  held  in 
the  Unitarian  church,  Rev.  A.  D.  Mayo,  pastor ;  and  "  Chan- 
ning and  his  Times  "  was  the  Sunday  evening  theme  of  Rev. 
Washington  Gladden,  in  the  North  Church. 

Shelbyville,  III. —  Rev.  J.  L.  Douthit  conducted  a 
memorial  service  on  Sunday  evening,  April  4,  and  gave  a 
discourse  on  Channing's  life  and  teachings. 

Burlington,  Vt. —  Appropriate  services  were  held  ;  and 
Rev.  L.  G.  Ware  held  up  to  his  people  a  portrait  of  Chan- 
ning's character,  taking  for  his  text  Dan.  xii.,  3  :  "  They 
that  be  wise  shall  shine  as  the  firmament,  and  they  that 
turn  many  to  righteousness  as  the  stars  forever  and  ever." 
The  sermon  was  reported  in  the  Free  Press  and  Times  of 
April   13th. 

Belfast,  Me. —  Rev.  E.  Crowninshield  gave  in  the  even- 
ing a  clear  and  large  discourse  on  Channing's  religious 
teaching  and  influence,  an  outline  of  which  appeared  in 
the  Progressive  Age. 

Watertown,  Mass. —  Rev.  A.  M.  Knapp  preached  on 
"  Channing,  the  Reformer  of  Theology." 


356  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Manchester,  N.H. —  Rev.  J.  B.  Harrison,  of  Franklin, 
uavc  a  discourse  on  Channint;-  in  the  morning  ;  and  in  the 
cxening  there  were  addresses  by  Messrs.  Harrison,  H.  C. 
Parker,  of  Nashua,  and  Mr.  Powers,  the  pastor. 

Caxtox,  N.V. —  Under  the  auspices  of  the  students  of 
the  Theological  School  (Universalist),  a  memorial  service 
was  held  on  the  evening  of  April  7,  at  which  Rev.  Dr.  Lee 
gave  an  address  over  an  hour  long,  which  the  Canton  Com- 
tncrcial  Advertiser  describes  as  "  full  of  facts,  incidents, 
quotations  from  Channing's  writings,  and  personal  recollec- 
tions illustrating  the  life  and  character  of  Dr.  Channing 
as  a  man,  a  leader  in  a  great  religious  revolution,  and 
a  philanthropist  and  social  reformer."  Among  the  exercises 
were  a  hymn,  written  for  the  occasion  by  W.  C.  Sellec, 
and  the  reading  of  an  original  poem  by  Miss  A.  G.  Waltze, 
entitled  "Channing  in  Richmond,"  being  based  on  an  epi- 
sode in  his  early  life. 

Melrose,  Mass. —  Rev.  Nathaniel  Seaver,  Jr.,  preached 
on  Channing's  life,  character,  and  influence,  and  gave  the 
Sunday-school  a  talk  about  Channing's  early  years. 

Detroit,  Wis. —  Rev.  W.  R.  Alger  delivered  a  memorial 
address  on  the  morning  of  Sunday,  April  1 1,  in  the  Unita- 
rian church,  taking  as  a  text,  "  The  righteous  shall  be  in 
everlasting  remembrance." 

Janesville,  Wis. —  The  children  of  All  Souls'  Sunday- 
school  sang;  and  Revs.  Faville  and  Sewell,  of  the  Methodist 
church,  Dr.  J.  B.  Whiting,  Hon.  J.  R.  Burnett,  and  James 
Burgess  addressed  the  meeting. 

Milwaukee,  Wis. —  The  celebration  was  held  on  the 
evening   of   April  6 ;    and  addresses   were   given    by   Rev. 


OTHER    CELEBRATIONS.  357 

Messrs.  Calthrop  of  Syracuse,  J.  L.  Dudley,  G.  E.  Gordon, 
Dr.  Moses  of  the  synagogue,  and  Prof.  McAllister.  The 
rabbi  spoke  of  Channing  as  "  a  modern  prophet,  without 
the  crudeness  of  the  prophets  of  old." 

Keokuk,  Iowa. —  Memorial  addresses  were  made  by 
Judge  G.  McCrary  of  the  Supreme  Bench,  Rabbi  Bogen, 
S.  M.  Clarke  of  Gate  City,  and   Revs.  Andrews  and   Hassel. 

Nashua,  N.H. —  The  Daily  Telegraph  of  April  13  said: 
"  Memorial  services  commemorative  of  the  centennial  anni- 
versary of  the  birth  of  one  of  New  England's  most  cele- 
brated modern  divines  occurred  at  the  Unitarian  church  on 
Sunday  last.  The  pastors  of  various  other  societies  were 
invited  to  be  present ;  but  none  accepted  the  invitation. 
The  duty  of  speaking  therefore  devolved  upon  Rev.  Messrs. 
Lincoln  and  Twiss.  There  were  flowers  about  the  pulpit, 
and  a  picture  of  Channing  was  hung  in  front  of  the  pulpit. 
The  choir  gave  one  or  two  very  fine  selections;  and  hymns 
were  sung,  written  by  J.  G.  Whittier  and  Rev.  Charles  T. 
Brooks.  Rev.  Mr.  Lincoln,  whose  life  of  nearly  eighty-one 
years  extends  far  back, —  almost  to  the  birth  of  Channing, 
—  spoke  acceptably  of  the  great  influence  of  this  man  on 
moral,  intellectual,  social,  and  religious  life.  Rev.  Mr. 
Twiss  spoke  eloquently  of  Channing's  life,  and  paid  a  fitting 
tribute,  not  only  to  his  great  genius,  but  to  his  simplicity 
and  goodness.  The  laity  was  represented  by  Dr.  Peavey, 
who  spoke  to  the  point  —  as  he  always  does  —  of  his  appre- 
ciation of  Channing  as  a  leveller  of  creeds  and  a  promoter 
of  moral  and  religious  life." 

East  Wilton,  N.H. —  The  meeting  of  Sunday,  April  11, 
was  addressed  by  Rev.  I.  Sumner  Lincoln,  Rev.  J.  Twiss, 
and  Dr.  Peavey. 


35''^  CII.WNINC    CKNTKNARY. 

Hartfokd,  (Junn. —  The  Hartford  Daily  Times  of  April  5 
said :  "  Yesterday  was  observed  by  the  Unitarians  as  a  me- 
morial of  Channing,  the  celebrated  preacher,  philanthropist, 
theologian,  and  Christian,  the  one  hundredth  anniversary  of 
whose  birth  occurs  this  present  week.  The  hall  was  made 
attractive  and  beautiful  with  vines  and  flowers ;  and  above 
the  desk  was  a  copy  of  Gambardella's  wonderful  portrait  of 
Channing,  life-size.  The  picture,  with  frame,  was  the  gift  of 
two  members  of  the  society.  The  services,  conducted  by  the 
pastor,  the  Rev.  John  C.  Kimball,  were  of  a  very  high  order. 
After  the  opening  reading,  prayer,  and  response  by  the  choir, 
the  hymn,  '  The  Abode  of  Saints,'  was  sung.  The  prayer 
that  followed  seemed  to  bring  the  audience  into  harmony 
with  the  tender  spirit  of  the  pastor,  whose  study  of  his  sub- 
ject seemed  to  imbue  him;  and  the  selections  read  from 
Channing's  own  writings  were  a  fitting  prelude  to  the  elo- 
quent discourse  that  followed.  *  The  Christian  Soldier'  was 
the  stirring  hymn  that  closed  the  service.  We  publish  the 
discourse,  and  invite  to  it  especial  attention  as  a  masterly 
treatment  of  the  subject,  as  well  as  a  fine  specimen  of  clear, 
good  thinking,  conveyed  in  an  admirably  simple  and  pellucid 
way." 

Montreal,  Canada. —  The  members  and  friends  of  the 
Liberal  Christian  Union  assembled  in  the  Church  of  the 
Messiah  last  evening,  in  commemoration  of  the  centennial 
birthday  of  Dr.  William  Ellery  Channing.  The  church  and 
lecture-room  were  both  profusely  decorated  with  flowers  and 
hot-house  plants,  which  displayed  the  tasteful  handiwork  of 
the  committee  of  young  ladies  who  had  the  arrangements  in 
charge.  Over  the  pulpit  was  poised  a  snow-white  dove; 
while  upon  the  reading-desk  was  a  bank  of  exquisite  flowers, 
bearing  the  word  "Channing"  in  crimson  flowers  on  a  back- 
ground of  white  ones.     To  the  right  of  the  chancel  was  a 


OTHER    CELEBRATIONS.  359 

life-size  bust  of  the  man  in  honor  of  whose  memory  the 
company  was  assembled.  The  exercises  of  the  evening- 
opened  with  Newman's  beautiful  hymn,  "  Lead,  Kindly 
Light,"  by  the  choir.  An  historical  sketch  of  Channing's 
life,  written  by  a  young  lady  of  the  congregation,  was  read 
by  Mr.  Alexander  Manson.  Whittier's  poem  on  "  Chan- 
ning "  was  prettily  recited  by  Miss  Annie  Smith.  Mr. 
George  W.  Stephens  was  to  have  considered  "  Channing,  the 
Reformer,"  but  confessed  that  a  contemplation  of  the  magni- 
tude of  the  subject  had  induced  him  to  decide  upon  reading 
the  opinions  held  of  Channing  by  eminent  men  of  other 
denominations.  His  j^rincipal  illustrations  were  drawn  from 
the  writings  of  the  late  Rev.  F.  W.  Robertson,  of  Brighton, 
England.  Dr.  T.  Sterry  Hunt  was  called  upon  for  an  ad- 
dress, and  responded  in  a  most  felicitous  and  able  manner, 
in  which  he  spoke  of  the  growing  influence  of  Channing  in 
human  thought,  and  included  him  among  the  prophets  of 
his  race.  A  sonnet,  ''Always  Young  for  Liberty,"  was  next 
recited  by  Miss  Jennie  Barney.  Mr.  W.  N.  Evans  read  an 
address,  entitled  "  Channing,  the  Man,"  in  which  he  laid 
much  of  the  goodness  and  gentleness  of  Channing's  char- 
acter to  the  influence  of  a  good  mother.  Rev.  Mr.  Barnes 
was  down  on  the  programme  for  "  Remarks  with  Pleasant 
Pages."  Mr.  Barnes'  "pleasant  pages"  consisted  of  letters 
of  salutation  and  good-will  from  the  following  friends :  Rev. 
J.  B.  Green,  of  Brattleboro,  Vt.,  late  pastor  of  the  Church 
of  the  Messiah;  Rev.  Frederick  Frothingham,  of  Milton, 
Mass.,  a  son  of  Montreal  ;  Rev.  Charles  G.  Ames,  editor  of 
the  CJiristian  Register,  of  Boston;  Mr.  William  H.  Baldwin, 
President  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Union,  of  Boston  ; 
Rev.  Rush  R.  Shippen,  of  Boston,  Secretary  of  the  Amer- 
ican Unitarian  Association ;  Rev.  M.  K.  Schermerhorn,  of 
Newport,  R.I.,  writing  as  from  the  "  cradle"  of  Channing; 
Rev.  J.  V .  W.  Ware,  of  Boston,  representing  the  church  of 


3^0  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

which  Channinj:^  was  pastor;  Rev.  C.  A.  Bartol,  the  oldest 
living  intimate  friend  of  Channing's  later  years  ;  Dr.  A.  P. 
Putnam,  of  lirooklyn,  N.Y.,  representing  the  Brooklyn  gath- 
ering; and  also  characteristic  letters  from  Rev.  Dr.  J.  Free- 
man Clarke,  of  Boston,  and  Rev.  Dr.  Henry  W.  Bellows  and 
Rev.  Robert  Collyer,  of  New  York.  The  letters  were  all  of 
an  inspiring  character ;  and  their  reading  was  received  with 
applause.  Mr.  Barnes  closed  his  remarks  by  conveying  a 
message  of  good-will  and  sympathy  from  Rev.  Dr.  Cordner, 
who  was  prevented  by  sickness  from  being  present.  An 
adjournment  to  the  lecture-room  then  took  place  for  a  soiree 
and  refreshments,  the  company  separating  at  a  late  hour. 
—  The  Star,  April  8. 

Concord,  N.H. —  The  centennial  of  the  birth  of  William 
Ellery  Channing  was  observed  at  the  Unitarian  church  in 
this  city,  on  Sunday,  both  forenoon  and  evening.  The 
morning  discourse  by  the  pastor,  Rev.  S.  C.  Beane,  dealt 
with  Channing's  early  life,  his  active  manhood,  and  the 
influence  that  survives  in  his  published  works  and  in  the 
history  of  thought  and  philanthropy.  As  distinguished  from 
all  previous  theologians,  he  took  man  for  his  starting-point, 
believing  with  Pope  that  "the  proper  study  of  mankind  is 
ipan."  Romanism  and  Protestantism  had  hitherto,  shaping 
their  religious  views  by  their  political,  made  God  a  despot, 
for  his  supposed  glory ;  and,  as  in  civil  despotisms,  man, 
the  subject,  became  of  little  account.  Election,  decrees, 
foreordination,  necessity,  left  no  room  for  human  freedom 
or  nobility.  Channing  re-enthroned  man,  saw  in  human 
nature  God's  image,  the  unspoiled  possibilities  of  exceed- 
ing beauty  and  grandeur;  saw  that  the  soul  and  conscience 
could  be  trusted  for  right  and  truth,  and  hence  should  be 
permitted  and  encouraged  to  be  free.  This  love  and  exalta- 
tion of  man  abolished  in  Channing's  mind  all  belief  in  divine 


OTHER    CELEBRATIONS.  361 

wrath,  reprobation,  and  total  depravity.  The  idea  of  vicari- 
ous atonement  he  regarded  as  the  offspring  of  human  sav- 
agery and  meanness  which  demanded  bribes  and  expiatory 
satisfaction.  The  Unitarianism  of  Channing,  which  waxed 
stronger  and  stronger  till  the  last,  was  simply  the  demand 
of  a  soul  that  saw  the  whole  race  to  be  one  and  the  universe 
one,  and  hence  a  Father  over  all,  with  one  mind  and  pur- 
pose and  personality.  The  preacher  traced  the  work  of 
Channing  in  various  channels  of  philanthropy,  education,  and 
politics,  all,  like  his  theology,  springing  from  his  belief  in 
human  nature  and  his  love  for  men. 

In  the  evening  as  in  the  morning,  there  was  a  large  con- 
gregation, composed  of  many  of  the  most  intelligent  and 
prominent  men  and  women  of  the  city.  The  pastor  pre- 
sided, and,  after  devotional  services,  began  by  saying  that 
Channing  is  so  universal,  and  his  words  and  works  extend 
into  so  many  directions,  that  it  is  hard  to  name  him.  He  is 
in  a  large  degree  the  father  of  Am.erican  literature,  and  was 
one  of  the  first  men  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  who  won  the 
attention  of  the  reading  public  of  Europe,  Lady  Holland 
and  Mrs.  Somerville  pronouncing  him  the  best  English 
writer  of  the  period.  As  a  theologian,  as  a  genius  in  re- 
ligion, as  an  abolitionist  and  advocate  of  peace,  he  was  also 
spoken  of;  and  it  was  announced  that,  during  the  present 
week,  his  centennial  would  be  observed  in  America,  India, 
Italy,  France,  England,  Hungary,  and  probably  Iceland. 

Frank  S.  Streeter,  Esq.,  followed  in  an  able  and  a  clear 
presentation  of  ttie  demands  of  religious  liberty,  as  repre- 
sented in  Channing. 

Judge  Asa  Fowler  drew  a  sharp  contrast  between  the 
Calvinism  of  the  last  century,  which  is  still  professed  and 
sworn  to  by  the  evangelical  churches,  and  the  rational  Uni- 
tarianism of  Channing  and  the  New  Testament. 

Rev.   Mr.    Conger,   in  a  hearty  and   extended  adch'css,  ex- 


362  CI  I  ANN  INC.    CENTENARY. 

pressed  the  slrong  s)'mpathy  of  the  Universalists  with 
Channing"  and   his  followers. 

He  was  followed  by  Hon.  Solon  A.  Carter,  who  gratefully 
spoke  of  his  indebtedness  to  the  training  of  his  boyhood  in 
the  liberal  views  of  the  great  American  prophet. 

Mr.  Parker  Pillsbury  spoke  earnestly  and  with  great  power 
of  Channing's  interest  in  all  philanthropies,  and  especially 
in  the  slavery  question. 

The  last  speaker  was  J.  C.  A.  Hill,  Esq.,  who  spoke  more 
particularly  of  Channing's  published  works,  and  urged  a 
new  reading  of  them,  announcing  that  they  would  soon  be 
for  sale  in  Concord. 

The  large  audience  seemed  deeply  interested  during  the 
two  hours  and  a  half  of  the  meeting ;  and  the  addresses 
were  alternated  with  delightful  music  by  the  choir,  hymns 
by  the  congregation,  and  a  solo  by  Mrs.  Lizzie  Carpenter, 
formerly  of  this  city,  now  a  distinguished  vocalist  of  Chi- 
cago. Letters  of  regret  for  absence,  full  of  grateful  appre- 
ciation of  Dr.  Channing,  were  received  among  others  from 
Hon.  W.  H.  H.  Allen  of  Claremont,  Hon.  E.  D.  Rand  of 
Lisbon,  and  Hon.  Wm.  E.  Chandler,  but  lack  of  time  pre- 
vented their  reading. —  Daily  People  and  Patriot,  April  ^. 

Portland,  Oregon. —  The  handsome  auditorium  of  the 
Unitarian  church  was  well  filled  last  night,  at  the  exercises 
commemorating  the  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth 
of  William  Ellery  Channing.  The  programme  opened  with 
an  excellent  selection,  Beatiis  Vir,  by  the  choir.  Rev.  T.  L. 
Eliot  then  delivered  the  following  address  of  welcome  :  — 

I  think  it  was  Laboulaye,  a  distinguished  author  in  France, 
who,  upon  reading  Channing  for  the  first  time,  said,  "  I 
have  found  a  man."  If  the  great  spirit,  who  is  a  century 
old  to-day,  takes  cognizance  of  our  thoughts,  no  word  can 
be  more  grateful  than  this,  whose  meaning  stands  forth  all 


OTHER    CELEBRATIONS.  363 

the  more  conspicuously  for  the  absence  of  qualifying 
phrase.  To  be  thought  in  some  degree  to  have  filled  the 
place  of  man,  to  have  touched  some  of  the  heights  and 
depths  comprehended  in  the  human  soul,  to  have  fulfilled 
in  action  and  word  something  of  the  life  to  which  infinite 
God  elects  his  children, —  would  be,  to  a  heart  like  Chan- 
ning's,  the  highest  honor,  the  completest  tribute  of  memory. 
In  him,  the  world  is  more  and  more  finding  a  man.  His 
work  derives  its  dignity  from  himself,  from  his  own  burning 
and  elevated  enthusiasm.  There  are  few  men  who  so  shine 
through  their  words,  and  make  the  reader  glow  as  if  face 
to  face  with  the  intensest  purpose  and  most  quenchless 
convictions.  Channing  is  called  a  prophet  of  humanity ; 
and,  while  we  turn  his  pages,  we  recognize  a  prophet's 
inspiration,  a  prophet's  tone.  Bunsen  well  describes  him, — 
"in  humanity  a  Greek,  in  citizenship  a  Roman,  in  Christian- 
ity an  Apostle." 

What  did  Channing  do  ?  For  brief  answer,  I  can  say : 
He  rediscovered  the  dignity  of  human  nature,  and  with  that 
great  discovery  glowed  and  burned  into  men's  hearts  a  new 
method,  a  new  principle  of  life.  He  found  his  fellow-beings 
sceptical,  not  only  of  others,  not  only  of  themselves,  but 
darkly  doubting,  and  disbelieving  in  the  very  type  of  that 
part  of  creation  called  human  and  humanity.  He  saw  that 
the  very  heart  of  Christianity  was  being  left  out.  Salvation 
was  being  called  "something  added  to  humanity,"  and  in 
his  insight  it  meant  "something  inherent  in  humanity, 
brought  forth,  unfolded,  and  redeemed."  His  method  was 
an  almost  unbounded  faith  in  man  as  such,  and  in  human 
society  as  such  ;  and  he  reasoned,  "  Once  get  a  man,  how- 
ever low  or  self-despairing,  to  believe  in  kiinself,  and  believe 
calmly  in  what  God  has  laid  away  in  his  soul,  and  with 
this  faith  will  come  impulse,  growth,  spirituality,  intellectual 
and   moral  salvation.  .  .  .  The  moral    nature   is   man's  irreat 


364  ClIANNING    CENTENARY. 

tie  to  the  Divinity.  If  .so,  there  is  but  one  mode  of  ap- 
proach to  Goil.  It  i.s  by  faithfulness  to  the  inward,  ever- 
lasting law."  If  you  will  read  the  words  I  have  ventured 
to  place  upon  the  programme  as  mottoes,  you  will  feel  the 
searching  power,  the  comprehensiveness  of  this  method. 
"All  minds  are  of  one  family,"  —  the  mind  of  God,  the 
mind  of  Christ,  the  mind  of  man, —  and  substantially, 
fundamentally  related  to  each  other,  as  are  members  of 
one  household.  "  The  lesson  of  the  universe  is  God's  impar- 
tiality. He  has  one  law,  one  love,  for  all."  To  draw  out 
the  full  meaning  involved  in  those  words  would  be  to  unite 
a  body  of  Divinity,  to  frame  a  widely  searching  theory  of 
nature  and  society,  to  redefine  Providence.  In  them  lies, 
as  if  in  germ,  the  best  elements  of  the  modern  scientific 
method.  "  I  belong  to  the  Church  Universal  :  nothing  shall 
separate  me  from  it."  Here  is  a  thought  expanding  and 
inspiring.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  Channing  belonged 
to  no  sect,  and,  while  intense  in  all  his  convictions,  held 
them  as  world  possessions.  "  One  sublime  idea  has  given 
me  unity  of  thought, —  the  greatness,  the  divinity  of  the 
soul."  To  understand  all  that  Channing  meant  by  this, 
one  must  read  his  life.  We  shall  find  it  no  idle  mysticism, 
but  a  grand  working  faith,  arraigning  a  Napoleon  as  a  giant 
failure,  denouncing  slavery,  war,  the  oppressions  of  society, 
intemperance,  partisan  selfishness.  Everywhere  appealing  for 
intellectual  freedom,  Channing  saw  Christ  in  every  human 
kind.  He  fulfilled  His  word,  "  Ye  have  done  it  unto  me." 
I  welcome  you,  friends,  to  this  simple  hour  of  memorial 
thoughts.  I  welcome  still  more  this  wondrous  day  of  grace 
in  which  we  live.  I  welcome  the  signs  that  our  race  is  in 
spiritual  and  mental  travail.  I  welcome  the  eternal  dawn- 
ing light  which  is  destined  to  go  on  into  perfect  day.  Other 
prophets  of  God  will  rise,  and  are  rising.  It  is  a  day  of 
open  vision.     May  we  fulfil  the  spirit  of  this  commemora- 


OTHER    CELEBRATIONS.  365 

tive  hour  by  a  resolve  to  keep  our  faces  to  the  light. 
The  conviction  that  the  Infinite  One  has  indeed  one  law, 
one  love,  for  all  that  in  the  moral  and  rational  nature  is 
God's  perpetual  revelation,  that  human  society  and  the  in- 
dividual are  forever  to  be  weighed  in  the  scales  of  moral 
purpose,  is  growing  upon  mankind.  This  conviction  stands 
behind  kings,  senates,  churches,  behind  wealth,  oppression, 
materialism ;  and  in  its  presence  these  things  become  shad- 
ows. Man,  his  rights,  his  wrongs,  his  moral  elevation,  his 
destiny  as  child  of  God,  is  the  keyword  of  the  future ;  and, 
wherever  the  note  is  struck,  and  life  flows  out,  there  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  is  set,  and  God  as  Sovereign  is  coming 
to  his  own. 

Mr.  Thomas  Frazar,  who  heard  Dr.  Channing  preach 
more  than  fifty  years  ago  in  Boston,  read  some  interesting 
reminiscences  of  the  great  liberal  writer.  Miss  Augusta 
Allen  read,  with  clearness,  good  expression,  and  fine  taste, 
not  unmixed  with  gentle  force,  Dr.  Channing's  address,  "  I 
call  that  mind  free."  Miss  Jennie  Miller  then  recited 
Whittier's  tribute,  "  Hero  and  Saint,"  and  was  followed  by 
Willie  Eliot,  who  recited  a  portion  of  Dr.  Channing's  ad- 
dress on  "Slavery  in  America,"  —  both  well  rendered.  The 
most  charming  portion  of  the  interesting  programme  was 
Mrs.  D.  F.  Smith's  reading  of  James  Russell  Lowell's  elegy 
on  Channing.  Her  rich,  low,  well-modulated  voice  was 
admirably  suited  to  the  selection,  and  every  stanza  was 
a  separate  gem.  Mr.  Alfred  T.  Sears  delivered  a  short, 
concise,  and  not  overdrawn  eulogy  on  the  character  of 
Channing,  closing  with  an  appeal  to  all  Christians  to  finish 
the  great  moral  structure  planned  by  the  man  whose  birth 
they  were  celebrating.  The  exercises  were  interspersed 
with  more  than  ordinarily  fine  offerings  by  the  splendid 
choir. 

After  the  literary  exercises,  the  announcement  was  made 


^66  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

that  every  one  present  would  be  the  guest  of  the  ladies  of 
the  church  at  refreshments,  which  were  served  in  the  chapel. 
A  picture  of  Channing,  surrounded  by  blooming  flowers, 
was  hung  in  the  chapel,  and  was  admired  by  all  present. 
Pleasant  social  intercourse  closed  a  most  enjoyable  evening. 
—  Daily  Oregonian,  April  8. 


NOTICES  OF  THE  AMERICAN  PRESS. 


To  GIVE  an  adequate  idea  either  of  the  number  or  the 
quality  of  the  centennial  tributes  to  Channing  by  our  Amer- 
ican press  would,  of  itself,  require  a  volume.  We  have  yet 
to  see  the  American  newspaper  which  has  not  in  some 
appropriate  way  alluded  to  the  occasion,  and  many  of  the 
tributes  have  been  elaborate  and  highly  discriminating. 
From  among  the  many  which  have  reached  us,  we  have 
culled  here  and  there  a  few  sentences  or  paragraphs,  remark- 
able either  because  of  their  source  or  for  some  intrinsic 
merit  of  insight  or  nice  criticism  :  — 

While  refusing  to  accept  a  great  deal  which  he  apparently  believed 
and  taught,  we  gladly  acknowledge  ourselves,  in  common  with  all  Chris- 
tians, to  be  indebted  to  him  exceedingly  for  much  wise  and  earnest 
spiritual  teaching,  and  for  the  example  of  a  singularly  pure  and  noble 
life.  The  distinctive  truths  with  which  his  name  is  associated,  certainly, 
as  now  uttered  by  his  successors,  are  altered  in  shape,  and  do  not  find 
advocates  as  readily  as  formerly.  But  no  one  can  read  his  writings  or  the 
record  of  his  career  without  learning  to  cherish  a  genuine  reverence  for 
him  as  a  truly  great  and  noble  man,  whose  memory  belongs  to  and 
should  be  honored  by  the  good  of  every  name. —  Boston  Congregation- 
alist. 

Channing  was  a  man  with  an  open  mind  ;  but  it  was  open  most  on  the 
heavenward  side.  If  he  seemed  to  estimate  men  too  highly,  .  .  .  did  he 
value  them  more  highly  than  did  Jesus  1     If  the  Man  of  Galilee  had 


368  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

estimated  men  as  did  some  of  the  theologians  before  Channing's  time, 
would  he  have  died  for  them  ?  Nay,  would  he  have  lived  for  them  ?  .  .  . 
His  own  words  upon  the  tenet  which  chiefly  distinguishes  the  Unitarian 
sect  are  that,  "  if  Trinitarians  would  tell  us  what  they  mean,  their  sys- 
tem would  generally  be  found  little  else  than  a  mystical  form  of  the 
Unitarian  doctrine."  It  hardly  seems  possible  to  the  men  of  this  gen- 
eration that  there  should  have  been  such  bitter  controversies  over  a 
difference  so  expressed.  .  .  .  Dr.  Channing  did  the  world  a  service,  for 
which  it  will  not  soon  let  his  name  die,  in  recalling  it  to  the  fact  that 
Christianity  is  a  life,  not  a  creed.  And,  being  a  life,  Channing  was 
entitled  to  be  called  a  Christian  of  Christians. —  Boston  Golden  Rule. 

Channing  was  one  of  the  few  earlier  names  in  American  literature 
that  gained  recognition  in  Europe,  and  compelled  the  admission  that  "an 
American  book  "  could  find  readers.  He  was  a  philanthropist,  pleading 
the  cause  of  the  poor  and  the  oppressed,  and  denouncing  the  evils  of 
intemperance  and  of  war,  when  his  was  as  the  voice  of  one  crying  in 
the  wilderness.  In  such  aspects,  his  character  and  life  are  a  common 
heritage. 

It  will  probably  be  said  that  Channing  originated  a  movement.  .  .  . 
But,  if  it  be  required  to  estimate  men  by  their  relations  to  such  a  move- 
ment, we  are  compelled  to  doubt  the  priority  of  Dr.  Channing.  He  was 
in  the  movement,  and  augmented  it,  but  was  himself  moved  along  with 
others  by  a  common  impulse. —  Boston  Watchman  {Baptist). 

We  doubt  if  any  modern  leader  in  Christian  thought  did  wiser,  better, 
more  successful  service  in  showing  that  reason  must  be  deferred  to,  that 
an  unnatural  faith  cannot  be  true,  that  no  amount  or  quality  of  testi- 
mony can  uphold  a  creed  at  which  nature  revolts.  There  was  great 
occasion  in  that  day  to  assert  earnestly  and  continuously  what  in  1880 
we  may  dismiss  with  a  word.  Now,  the  very  party  which  pronounces 
the  theological  specialties  of  Channing  a  failure  takes  its  chief  pride  in 
standing  upon  the  identical  platform  for  constructing  which  Channing 
was  derided  by  no  less  an  authority  than  Prof.  Moses  Stuart.  His 
formula  is  Orthodoxy  in  accord  with  science. 

Cheerfully,  gratefully,  we  bear  our  humble  testimony  to  the  greatness 
of  Channing,  to  the  pre-eminence  of  the  service  he  rendered  the  Chris- 
tian Church  and  the  world.  We  do  not  moderate  our  humble  encomium 
in  the  recollection  that  the  great  Unitarian  was  positively,  almost  pas- 
sionately, the  enemy  of  avowed  Universalism.     We  cannot  say  that  he 


NOTICES    OF    THE    AMERICAN    PRESS.  369 

was  opposed  to  Universalism.  But  he  was  determined  in  liis  opposition 
to  avowed  Universalism.  We  cannot  say  that  he  invented,  but  he 
sanctioned  and  gave  great  prestige  to,  the  policy  of  wholly  evading  the 
question  of  human  destiny.  He  shunned  the  issue.  He  taught  a  whole 
generation  of  Unitarians  to  shun  it.  A  third  generation  of  Unitarians 
—  that  of  the  present  —  has  departed  from  the  policy;  and  the  Univer- 
salist  issue  is  now  boldly  met  in  nearly  every  Unitarian  pulpit  and  peri- 
odical.—  The  Christian  Leader  {Universalist). 

Once  he  was  the  leader  of  a  school  of  religious  thought,  the  offset  of 
New  England  Puritanism,  which  culminated  and  centred  chiefly  in  Bos- 
ton and  its  vicinity;  but  long  before  his  death  he  outgrew  his  limitations, 
and  became  in  a  certain  sense  the  great  ethical  teacher  of  New  England. 
As  pure  an  idealist  as  Emerson,  as  fearless  in  the  support  of  political  prin- 
ciples as  Garrison,  he  belonged  essentially  to  the  school  of  Wordsworth 
and  Coleridge,  and  to  the  band  of  Cambridge  Platonists  of  two  centu- 
ries ago.  It  was  by  accident  that  he  came  to  represent  Unitarianism. 
Its  controversies  were  distasteful  to  him,  its  later  crystallization  into 
ecclesiastical  forms  was  not  to  his  liking;  but  this  does  not  prove  that 
he  had  any  fondness  for  the  Church  or  ever  entered  into  any  conception 
of  its  system.  There  is  nothing  to  encourage  this  in  his  memoirs  or  in 
his  published  works ;  and  yet  there  is  much  in  the  temper  and  tone  of 
Channing's  works,  much  in  the  way  in  which  he  has  set  forth  funda- 
mental truths  of  natural  religion,  much  in  the  drift  of  his  influence  upon 
religious  thought,  which  has  been  largely  preparatory  to  the  better 
understanding  of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  New  England.  It  could  not 
but  be  so. 

Channing  was  a  positive  thinker.  His  tendency  was  to  construct 
something.  He  saw  the  deficiency  in  the  religion  of  his  day,  and  sought 
to  find  a  basis  for  it  in  what  is  permanent  in  human  nature.  Dr.  Chal- 
mers thought  him  essentially  wrong;  but  the  growing  verdict  of  the 
broadest  and  wisest  men  in  America  and  Europe,  as  they  have  come  to 
judge  him  apart  from  religious  prejudice,  is  that  he  was  essentially  right 
as  far  as  he  went.  Churchmen  must  say  that  he  was  as  nearly  right  as 
a  man  usually  is  who  does  not  stand  upon  the  basis  of  historical  Chris- 
tianity. The  evidence  is  now  so  fully  in  as  to  what  he  was,  his  writings 
have  so  widely  disseminated  his  ethical  teachings,  his  moral  principles 
have  been  found  to  come  up  so  closely  to  the  generally  accepted  stand- 
ard of  what  the  spiritual  life  is,  that  —  not  among  Unitarians  only, 
but  among  all  Christian  people  —  he  is  looked  up  to  as  a  man  wlio  lived 
in  advance  of  his  time,  whose  "soul  was  like  a  star,  and  dwelt  apart," 
25 


370  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

and  whose  memory  is  precious  wherever  what  is  best  in  human  hfe  is 
honored  and  loved. 

While  the  special  trustees  of  Channing's  fame  and  memory  gather 
this  week  to  honor  his  centennial  birtiiday  at  Newport,  we  cannot  with- 
hold our  hearty  recognition  of  what  the  religious  world  owes  to  Chan- 
ning,  nor  allow  the  disciples  of  a  certain  school  of  religious  thought  to 
feel  that  he  belongs  exclusively  to  them.  .  .  .  He  is  now  one  of  the  few 
Americans  in  whose  fame  all  men,  whatever  may  be  their  religious  fold, 
take  conscious  pride.  And  generations  yet  to  come  will  honor  the  spirit- 
ual force  of  the  man,  when  his  writings  may  have  been  forgotten. —  The 
Cli  u rch ma n  {Episcopa lia n). 

While  Channing  was  broader  than  any  denomination  of  his  day,  it 
certainly  is  true  that  what  he  left  of  his  work  and  influence  was  be- 
queathed to  the  world.  Therefore,  the  part  which  not  only  clergymen, 
but  prominent  men  connected  with  evangelical  societies,  took  in  recent 
demonstrations,  was  a  privilege  to  which  they  had  undisputed  claim. 
They  viewed  a  lofty  character,  and  so  much  of  a  grand  mission  as  was 
accomplished  while  the  actor  was  among  earthly  scenes,  from  their  own 
stand-point,  and  spoke  such  words  of  appreciation  as  seemed  to  them 
fittest.  There  was  no  stinted  praise  or  trace  of  bigotry,  whatever  dis- 
criminations there  may  have  been,  that  could  give  rise  to  the  suspicion 
that  they  were  not  glad  to  honor  one  to  whom  the  common  consent  of 
mankind  is  fast  according  high  rank  among  the  prophets  and  saints  of 
the  Most  High.  ...  A  hundred  years  hence,  none  of  those  now  living 
will  be  here  to  attend  another  memorial  celebration ;  but  there  will  be 
another  Channing  Centennial  Celebration,  April  7,  1980,  for  Dr.  Chan- 
ning's name  and  fame  will  live  on  with  such  power  and  influence  that 
there  will  be  a  celebration  of  the  two  hundredth  anniversary  of  his 
birthday.  He  will  be  remembered,  not  on  account  of  anything  he  did  in 
theology,  but  on  account  of  what  one  of  his  biographers  described  as 
"  the  divine  spirit  of  his  life  and  influence."  It  is  this  that  makes  his 
memory  what  it  is  to  those  who  cherish  it. —  Worcester  Spy. 

Dr.  Channing  was  an  influence,  an  atmosphere  of  incalculable  reach 
and  intensity  to  those  who  felt  the  touch  of  his  personality.  It  is  to 
them  that  his  writings  still  impart  an  impression  of  transcendent  power, 
while  men  of  every  type  of  Christian  faith  discover  in  them  a  tender, 
winning  thoughtfulness  and  graciousness,  which  endears  their  author  to 
all  hearts.  It  is  not  the  thought  which  forms  their  contents  which  gives 
them  this  grasp  of  men.     In  our  judgment,  Dr.  Orville  Dewey,  of  Chan- 


NOTICES    OF    THE    AMERICAN    PRESS.  37 1 

ning's  own  church,  surpassed  him  as  a  thinker.  It  is  the  discovery  of 
a  great  and  very  good  man  behind  the  book, —  a  man  who  saw  the  invisi- 
ble. It  is  this  discovery  which  imparts  a  value  to  his  slightest  utterance 
on  any  theme.  And,  of  Channing's  thought,  it  is  not  the  definitely  theo- 
logical, much  less  the  sectarian,  element  which  has  moved  men.  .  .  . 
Channing's  was  an  influence  parallel  to  that  of  Coleridge, —  of  whom  he 
was  in  a  great  measure  a  disciple, —  of  Dr.  James  Marsh,  and  of  Fred- 
erick Maurice.  He  was  a  natural  Platonist  in  the  Aristotelian  world. — 
Philadelphia  Weekly  Notes. 

Channing  did  much  in  many  ways,  but  as  a  man  he  seems  greater  than 
anything  he  did.  Not  only  by  his  teachings  and  his  achievements,  but 
by  the  lustre  of  his  character  and  the  height  of  his  aspiration, —  in  a  word, 
by  the  breadth  and  dignity  of  his  manhood, —  he  has  reflected  honor  on 
us  all.  .  .  .  His  was  the  attitude  rather  of  the  prophet  and  the  oracle  than 
of  the  legislator.  There  were  times  when  his  utterance  seemed  fraught 
with  the  solemnity,  but  also  with  the  vagueness,  of  second-sight.  On 
the  other  hand,  we  are  astonished  now  and  then  by  the  unerring  accu- 
racy of  his  intuitions.  For  example,  Channing  seems  to  have  com- 
pletely divined  Napoleon  Bonaparte  at  a  time  when  the  materials  of  a 
right  judgment  were  not  at  hand,  more  than  half  a  century,  indeed,  be- 
fore the  publication  of  Lanfrey's  History  and  the  Memoirs  of  Madame  de 
Remusat.  He  was  also  one  of  the  first  to  detect  the  grievous  blunders 
in  the  existing  theories  of  penitentiary  discipline.  .  .  .  Those  who  would 
appreciate  the  wide  ethical  and  social  gulf  between  the  liberal  New 
Englaind  of  our  day  and  the  austere  New  England  of  three-quarters  of  a 
century  ago  will  do  well  to  study  the  career  of  William  Ellery  Channing. 
He  beheld  the  birth  of  the  forces  which  brought  about  the  change ;  he 
was  a  part  of  them ;  indeed,  he  must  be  credited  with  the  largest  share 
in  the  dynamic  agencies  which  have  caused  the  permanent  divorce  of 
the  New  England  intellect  from  the  narrow  Calvinism  of  an  earlier 
epoch.  It  is  true,  as  we  have  said,  that  the  movement  which  Channing 
did  so  much  to  stimulate  has  left  him  far  behind,  that  the  premises  of 
his  theology  have  been  discarded,  its  limitations  overstepped,  its  point 
of  view  almost  forgotten.  His  influence,  however,  has  far  transcended 
the  bounds  of  the  transitory  creed  he  sought  to  formulate,  and  may 
be  recognized  in  every  phase  and  guise  of  liberal  Christianity. —  New 
York  Sun. 

The  materials  exist  for  a  better  knowledge  of  Channing  to-day  than 
even  his  best  friends  had  of  him  when  he  was  living.     In  his   lifetime, 


.i/- 


CHANNING    CENTENARY. 


few  knew  him  intimately:  the  pulpit  was  the  chief  channel  of  his  influ- 
ence upon  public  opinion,  liut  now  we  know  him,  not  only  through 
those  few,  hut  through  his  collected  writings  ;  and  these  writings  have 
had  a  circulation  unique  and  unparalleled  for  their  kind.  .  .  .  And,  if  we 
except  Jonathan  Edwards,  no  other  American  has  ever  contributed  more 
to  the  vital  and  quickening  thought  of  the  world.  .  .  .  He  was  such  a 
master  of  moral  philosophy,  such  an  original  student  of  the  intuitions 
of  human  nature,  that  he  controlled  the  tide.  The  Unitarians  could 
have  no  better  man  to  guide  the  school  of  religious  thought  which  they 
represent,  and  no  man  among  them  has  ever  equally  thrilled  men's  souls 
with  the  passionate  beauty  of  virtue  as  a  sentiment  and  a  life.  It  is 
always  dangerous  to  fashion  new  channels  for  the  religious  nature  ;  but 
Channing  had,  what  his  followers  have  seldom  shared,  the  inspiration  of 
his  idea.  .  .  .  He  was  the  pioneer  of  religious  inquiry,  the  spiritual  father 
of  Parker  and  Emerson.  But  he  was  more.  .  .  .  He  stands  for  what  is 
noblest  and  best  in  human  life.  Nothing  that  concerns  man  is  foreign  to 
him.  Neither  Socrates  nor  Plato  has  reasoned  more  profoundly  for  im- 
mortality, and  no  writers  on  natural  religion  have  struck  notes  quite  so 
high.  But  at  the  very  point  where  a  great  mind  passes  within  the  veil, 
where  Fdnelon  passed,  where  his  friend,  Cardinal  Cheverus,  passed, 
where  faith  leads  the  reason,  Channing  acts  the  part  of  the  natural  man. 
He  is  the  moralist,  not  the  devotee  :  the  man  of  speculative  reason,  not 
the  disciple  of  love.  .  .  .  He  represents  the  perpetual  youth  of  the  think- 
ing world,  and  interprets  realities  which  every  man,  sooner  or  later,  has 
to  interpret  for  himself.  This  has  given  his  writings  an  exceptional  in- 
terest and  value.  ...  A  generation  to  come  he  is  likely  to  be  even  more 
influential  than  he  is  to-day.  His  writings  strike  into  the  permanent 
elements  of  life.  He  is  felt  to  be  a  true  "prophet  of  the  soul." — New 
York  Times. 

Very  many  recognized  Orthodox  men  (as  Orthodoxy  runs  nowadays) 
stand  on  the  same  platform  substantially  as  to  sin  and  the  atonement ; 
and  for  such  beliefs  Channing  would  not  be  driven  now  out  of  the 
Evangelical  communion,  as  he  would  have  no  occasion  to  present  his 
views  with  such  polemic  force  as  he  had  sixty  years  ago.  To  the  term 
"Channing  Unitarians,"  many  of  the  denomination  would  now  object; 
but  it  designates  what  we  regard  as  the  high-water  mark  of  Unitarian- 
ism, —  a  Unitarianism  which  excels  in  its  Christology,  but  still  more  in 
its  apprehension  of  sin,  not  as  a  disease  or  an  accident,  but  as  personal 
guilt;  and,  therefore,  of  the  obligation  of  repentance  and  reformation, 
of  a  moral  consecration,  and  a  striving  after  a  perfection  like  God's,  and 
not  a  thin  "  ethical  culture." —  New  Yofk  Independent. 


NOTICES    OF    THE    AMERICAN    PRESS.  3/3 

It  is  a  severe  test  of  the  hold  which  a  great  man  has  on  posterity, 
when  we  are  asked  to  celebrate  his  hundredth  birthday.  Few  of  his 
own  generation  are  left  to  swing  their  hats  for  him ;  and,  unless  his 
service  to  humanity  has  been  broad  and  deep,  the  next  generation  does 
not  rally  around  his  name.  Channing  has  stood  this  test  remarkably 
well.  The  Newport  celebration  of  his  centenary  was  naturally  the  place 
of  greatest  interest,  and  was  fortunate  in  the  presence  of  men  who  could 
best  give  meaning  to  the  occasion.  Dr.  Bellows  was  the  best  man, 
perhaps,  to  speak  of  Channing,  though  hardly  his  representative  in 
religious  belief;  and  his  oration,  two  hours  in  length,  was  a  full  and  fair 
statement  of  Channing's  religious  and  humanitarian  position.  The  con- 
trast between  the  speaker's  statement  of  Channing's  views  of  Christ  and 
his  own  views  was  painful.  Channing's  views  of  Christ,  said  Dr. 
Bellows,  were  central  and  commanding,  historical  and  supernatural;  but 
his  eulogist  said  that  he  would  not  have  Jesus  out  of  the  ranks  of  our 
common  manhood.  The  oration  was  a  significant  restatement  of  the 
chief  points  in  Channing's  life,  including  some  personal  reminiscences. 

There  was  a  scene  on  the  platform  while  Dr.  Bellows  was  speaking, 
which  perhaps  few  thought  of,  but  which  to  me  was  more  inspiring  than 
anything  that  happened  during  the  day.  It  was  the  grouping  of  the 
men  who  had  naturally  the  deepest  interest  in  the  centenary.  Directly 
behind  Dr.  Bellows  sat  the  foremost  pupil  of  Channing,  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson,  his  eyes  sparkling,  his  head  bent  forward,  his  face  all  aglow 
with  excitement  to  catch  more  distinctly  every  fresh  point  made  by  the 
speaker.  On  the  left  of  Emerson  sat  William  F.  Channing,  the  only 
son  of  Dr.  Channing,  himself  evidently  at  threescore  and  ten  a  charac- 
teristic man,  his  heavy  gray  hair  struggling  to  escape  from  his  ample 
head,  his  restless  position  indicating  that  the  past  was  struggling  with 
the  present  in  his  mind,  his  face  so  marked  that  everybody  was  saying, 
"Who  is  he?"  On  Emerson's  right  sat  Channing's  nephew,  the  Rev. 
William  H.  Channing,  a  small,  spare  man,  having  the  outline  of  his 
uncle's  features,  the  face  and  look  indicating  a  temperament  finely  organ- 
ized and  of  spiritual  insight,  so  wrapped  up  in  the  occasion  that  he 
seemed  lost  in  his  own  thoughts,  and  yet  following  the  speaker  with  the 
keenest  emotion.  Next  to  him  sat  the  Rev.  Samuel  Longfellow,  a  brother 
of  the  poet,  himself  a  man  of  the  Channing  type,  his  keen,  piercing  eye 
taking  in  the  whole  scene.  And  on  the  outer  edge  of  the  half-circle  sat 
the  venerable  A.  Bronson  Alcott,  a  Boston  schoolmaster  when  Chan- 
ning was  at  the  height  of  his  fame,  now  an  octogenarian,  apparently  the 
youngest  man  on  the  platform,  as  eager  as  Emerson  to  catch  every 
point,  and  evidently  feeling  in  some  undefinablc  way  that  Channing  was 


374  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

a  part  of  his  own  life.  'Fhe  faces  of  these  men,  as  emotions  and  mem- 
ories clian^jed  the  features,  was  the  unforgetable  part  of  the  occasion. 
It  was  lik-e  reading  history,  personated  by  the  actors  themselves,  to 
watch  them.  The  speaker  could  have  turned  around  at  any  moment 
and  said,  "'  Is  this  not  so  .'*"  Emerson,  all  unconsciously  to  himself,  was 
irresistible.  He  had  the  eager  look  of  youth.  His  countenance  was  all 
flushed  like  that  of  a  girl.  You  had  to  look  at  the  thin  gray  hair  to 
keep  to  the  fact  that  he  was  an  old  man.  Though  he  spoke  not  a  word, 
his  very  presence,  his  deep,  absorbing,  silent  interest  in  all  that  was  said 
and  done,  did  more  to  make  the  occasion  great  and  memorable  than  any- 
thing else.  It  is  he  who  once  said  of  Channing,  "  In  our  wantonness, 
we  often  flout  Dr.  Channing,  and  say  he  is  getting  old;  but,  as  soon  as 
he  is  ill,  we  remember  he  is  our  bishop,  and  we  have  not  done  with  him 
yet."  And  it  is  he  of  whom  Channing  once  said,  "  He  is  a  great  moral 
and,  I  am  glad  to  think,  also  profoundly  Christian  teacher,  who  deserves 
our  respect  by  his  whole  life":  he  "seems  to  be  gifted  to  speak  to  an 
audience  which  is  not  addressed  by  any  of  us."  Emerson  himself  was 
the  silent  but  conspicuous  hero  of  the  Channing  Centennial. —  Corre- 
spondence of  the  Independettt. 


CELEBRATIONS  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN 
AND  IRELAND. 


THE  CELEBRATION  AT  LONDON. 


MEETING  AT   ST.  JAMES'  HALL. 

[From  the  report  in  the  Inquirer  of  April  lo.] 

On  Wednesday  evening,  April  7,  St.  James'  Hall  was 
filled  in  almost  every  part  by  a  brilliant  assembly,  met  to 
celebrate  the  centenary  of  the  birth  of  William  Ellery  Chan- 
ning.  Near  the  organ  were  draped  the  flags  of  England 
and  the  United  States,  and  the  front  of  the  platform  was 
profusely  decorated  with  choice  flowers.  While  the  audi- 
ence were  assembling,  a  very  appropriate  selection  of  music 
from  Mendelssohn  and  Handel  was  played  on  the  fine  organ 
by  Mr.  Thomas  Petitt,  organist  lof  the  Bach  Choir ;  and  the 
Hallelujah  Chorus  was  played  at  the  close  of  the  meeting. 

After  teas  had  been  served  to  a  constant  succession  of 
parties  in  a  large  room  adjoining  the  Great  Hall,  the  Chair 
was  taken  by  Mr.  David  Martineau,  the  President  of  the 
British  and  P'oreign  Unitarian  Association,  who  was  sur- 
rounded on  the  platform,  among  others,  by  Mrs.  Arnold  and 
her  son  (the  daughter  and  grandson  of  the  Rev.  W.  H. 
Channing,  the  nephew  and  biographer  of  Channing) ;  the 
Revs.  Dr.  Martineau,  Dr.  Sadler,  Dr.  S.  Davidson,  Dr.  Wy- 
sard  (German  Lutheran  Church),  Dr.  Laird  Collier,  R. 
Spears,  J.  Lstlin  Carpenter,  C.  V>.  Upton,  James  Drummond, 


3/8  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

T.  VV.  Freckelton,  C.  Wicksteed,  H.  Solly,  T.  L.  Marshall, 
E.  M.  Geldart,  J.  Worthington,  T.  Rix,  M.  C.  Gascoigne,  T. 
Crow,  G.  Carter,  C.  Corkran,  F.  Summers,  J.  T.  Whitehead, 
P.  H.  Wicksteed,  W.  J.  Odgers,  J.  Shannon,  J.  P.  Ham,  J. 
Martin,  J.  E.  Stead,  T.  Dobson  (Brighton),  T.  Taylor  (Hors- 
ham), P.  W.  Clayden,  J.  Baldwin  Brown,  C.  Shakespeare 
(St.  Stephen's,  Westbourne-grove),  J.  N.  Hoare,  Mark  Wilks, 

W.  Dorling, Roe  (Vicar  of  St.  Catherine's,  Brixton),  W. 

Panckridge  (St.  Matthew's,  City-road),  W.  Urwick,  Dr.  Ave- 
ling,  John  Stanton,  J.  Charlesworth  (Rotherham),  Professor 
E.  H.  Plumptre,  Dr.  Carpenter,  F.R.S.  ;  Messrs.  Meadows 
Martineau,  J. P.,  T.  Hughes,  Q.C.,  E.  Clodd,  F.  Nettlefold, 
S.  S.  Tayler,  R.  Glover,  J. P.,  T.  C.  Clarke,  W.  Shaen,  J.  T. 
Hart,  E.  Lawrence,  C.  Watson,  Courtney  Kenney,  C.  E. 
Mudie,  E.  Bromley,  Carvell  Williams,  C.  Allen  (Secretary 
of  the  Anti-slavery  Society),  W.  Talleck  (Secretary  of  the 
Howard  Society),  etc. 

In  the  body  of  the  hall,  we  observed  the  Revs.  R.  B. 
Drummond  (Edinburgh),  D.  Amos  (Southampton),  C.  M. 
Birrell,  P.  M.  Higginson  (Styal),  J.  R.  McKee,  V.  Davis 
(Nottingham),  J.  G.  Evans  (Preston),  J.  D.  H.  Smyth,  Mrs. 
Madge,  Mrs.  G.  Martineau,  Mrs.  C.  Holland,  Miss  Anna 
Swanwick,  Dr.  Wylde,  Dr.  Haward,  Dr.  Longstaff;  Messrs. 
J.  T.  Preston,  R.  Bartram,  T.  Smith  Osier,  Q.C.,  J.  Gregory 
Foster,  Dr.  Aspland,  G.  Lawford,  M.  D.  Conway,  J.  Hobson 
(Sheffield),  etc. 

A  considerable  number  of  letters  have  been  received,  ex- 
pressing sympathy  with  the  objects  of  the  meeting,  and 
regretting  inability  to  attend  ;  among  others,  from  Sir  J.  C. 
Lawrence,  Miss  F.  P.  Cobbe,  the  Hon.  and  Rev.  W.  H. 
Fremantle,  the  Revs.  John  Macnaught,  Dr.  Bayley  (Sweden- 
borgian),  H,  Griffith,  W.  Young,  Dr.  G.  Vance  Smith,  J.  C. 
Harrison,  Dr.  A.  J.  Ross,  Johnson  Barker,  LL.B.,  and  John 
Hunter  (York),  etc. 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  379 

At  least,  two  thousand  persons  must  have  been  present, 
four-fifths  of  whom,  we  judge,  were  members  of  the  Unita- 
rian and  Free  Christian  Churches. 

The  following  hymn,  by  J.  Mason  Neale,  was  sung  to  the 
tune  "  Weber  "  with  great  spirit  and  feeling  by  the  whole 
assembly  :  — 

They  whose  course  on  earth  is  o'er, 
Think  they  of  their  brethren  more  ? 
They  before  the  throne  who  bow, 
Feel  they  for  their  brethren  now  .'' 

Yea,  the  holy  dead  have  still 
Part  in  all  our  joy  and  ill ; 
One  in  heart,  and  one  in  love ; 
We  below,  and  they  above. 

Those  whom  many  a  land  divides, 
Many  mountains,  many  tides, 
Have  they  with  each  other  part .-' 
Have  they  fellowship  in  heart  ? 

Each  to  each  may  be  unknown, 
Wide  apart  their  lots  be  thrown; 
Differing  tongues  their  lips  may  speak; 
One  be  strong,  and  one  be  weak : 

Yet,  in  tear  and  sigh  and  prayer, 
Each  with  other  hath  a  share; 
With  each  other  join  they  here 
In  affliction,  doubt,  and  fear. 

So  with  them  our  hearts  we  raise. 
Share  their  work,  and  join  their  praise ; 
Blessed  pledge  that  we  shall  be 
Joined,  O  Lord,  in  bliss  with  thee. 

An  appropriate  prayer  was  offered  by  the  Rev.  Professor 
Drummond. 

The  Chairman. —  I  would  now  like  to  call  upon  the  secre- 
tary to  read  two  or  three  letters  from  persons  who  had 
hoped  to  be  with  us  this  evening,  and  whose  hearts  are  very 
heartily  with  us,  but  in  consequence  of  other  events  taking 
place  just  now  have  been   prevented.     I  may  mention   that 


380  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

James  Russell  Lowell,  who  is  at  present  the  United  States 
Minister  at  the  Court  of  St.  James,  expressed  to  our  secre- 
tary his  deep  regret  that,  owing  to  the  unfortunate  illness 
of  his  wife,  he  has  been  obliged  to  return  to  Madrid,  other- 
wise he  would  hope  to  have  been  with  us  here,  and  has  sent, 
as  many  of  you  know,  a  very  beautiful  elegy,  which  has  ap- 
peared in  one  of  our  papers  last  week. 

The  Rev.  H.  Ierson. — The  first  letter  is  a  very  brief  one 
from  the  Rev.  Stopford  Brooke,  who  says,  "  I  should  have 
liked  to  acknowledge  in  some  way  my  great  obligations  to 
Dr.  Channing, —  obligations  which  I  shall  never  forget,  and 
which  I  can  scarcely  overestimate," — but  he  is  from  town, 
and  not  able  to  be  present.  Mr.  George  MacDonald  writes 
to  thank  the  committee  for  the  honor  they  do  him  in  desir- 
ing his  presence  at  the  commemoration  :  "  It  would  have 
given  me  much  pleasure  to  be  there,  but  I  shall  not  be  in 
England  so  early  in  the  year.  I  hope  you  will  have  some 
one  from  Boston  with  you.  There  Channing's  spirit  seems 
to  hang  brooding  over  the  place."  A  letter  from  Mr.  Mur- 
phy, of  the  Lambeth  Mission,  expresses  his  interest  in  Dr. 
Channing's  work  and  his  desire  to  honor  so  noble  a  mem- 
ory, but  he  regrets  that  he  is  not  able  to  be  here.  There 
is  a  letter  from  the  eminent  lecturer  of  the  Hibbert  Trust  of 
this  week,  M.  Renan,  who  writes  :  "  I  regret  sincerely  that 
an  engagement  that  I  had  accepted  for  the  evening  of 
Wednesday,  some  time  since,  will  not  permit  me  to  join 
your  Association  in  celebrating  the  centenary  of  the  birth 
of  Channing.  Channing  was  a  true  prophet.  He  heard 
with  a  rare  justice  the  first  warning  sounds  of  the  clock 
of  the  future  gospel.  You  have  reason  to  honor,  as  pillars 
of  the  eternal  Christianism,  these  saints  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  the  grandest  of  all  that  Rome  will  not  canonize. 
The  doctrine  of  Channing,  entirely  a  doctrine  of  peace 
and  love,  will  remain   true,  whatever  be  the  evolutions    of 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  38 1 

science  and  of  the  free  spirit."  A  letter  addressed  to  the 
committee  from  Mr.  Frank  Channing,  who  is  at  present 
very  busily  occupied  in  election  matters  in  his  neighbor- 
hood, expresses  his  deep  interest  in  the  meeting,  and  his 
great  regret  that  he,  a  member  of  the  family,  in  the  absence 
of  his  father,  at  present  in  America,  is  not  able  to  be  with 
you ;  but  he  gives  a  letter,  which  might  have  been  read  to 
the  meeting,  had  time  permitted.  But  you  will  be  inter- 
ested to  know  that  the  nephew  of  Dr.  Channing  has  a  son 
in  England,  whose  spirit  is  with  you  on  the  present  occa- 
sion. [The  President  here  remarked  that  a  daughter  of  the 
Rev.  W.  H.  Channing  was  present.]  Dr.  E.  A.  Abbott 
regrets  that  the  state  of  his  health  prevents  his  being  able 
to  be  present ;  but  he  says  :  "  What  I  have  read  of  Chan- 
ning increases  my  regret  at  my  enforced  absence.  I  hope 
many  more  worthy  representatives  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land will  be  present  to  testify  that,  from  the  contemplation 
of  Channing's  simple  allegiance  and  loyal  devotion  to  Christ, 
it  is  impossible  even  for  us  Trinitarians  not  to  derive  a 
spiritual  benefit,  and  to  feel  that,  even  as  regards  the  wor- 
ship of  Christ,  we  have  much  to  learn  from  the  study  of  the 
words  and  works  of  so  true  a  servant  of  our  common  Mas- 
ter. But  what  has  most  impressed  me  has  been  the  thor- 
ough and  systematic  manner  in  which  this  great  prophet  of 
reform  applied  the  principle  of  Christianity  to  social  and 
political  questions.  It  is  here,  most  of  all,  that  we  of  the 
Church  of  England  must  feel  that  in  Channing  we  have  a 
pattern  whom  we  should  do  well  to  keep  before  our  minds 
for  many  generations.  And,  for  my  part,  after  reading  his 
discourse  on  Slavery,  and  that  on  the  Abolitionists,  and 
contrasting  his  political  theory  and  practice  with  that  of 
many  of  my  brethren  in  the  Church,  I  am  tempted  to  wish 
that  there  might  be  added  to  our  Thirty-nine  Articles 
yet  a  fortieth,  teaching  our  clergy  to  distinguish  between 


382  CHANNlNCi    CENTKNAKV. 

that  lower  form  of  politics,  which  he  describes  as  the  tactics 
oC  party  for  gaining  power,  and  that  higher  form  which  he 
defines  as  the  study  and  pursuit  of  the  true,  enduring  good 
of  the  community,  and  the  application  of  great,  unchange- 
able principles  to  ]niblic  affairs,  which  latter  pursuit  no 
minister  of  Christ  can  neglect  with  spiritual  impunity. 
More  especially,  in  his  discourses  on  the  elevation  of  the 
laboring  classes,  I  know  not  who  can  fail  to  sympathize 
with  his  high  yet  sober  idea  of  the  future  in  store  for  work- 
ingmen,  with  his  anticipations  of  the  powerful  part  that 
Christianity  is  destined  to  play  in  bringing  about  the 
brighter  state  of  things  to  come,  and  with  his  indignant 
protest  that  the  future  influence  of  Christianity  must  not 
be  judged  from  its  effect  in  those  past  periods  in  which 
it  has  been  perverted  to  a  political  engine  for  making  the 
poor  poorer,  and  for  preventing  the  meek  from  inheriting 
the  earth."  I  have  read  the  substance  of  Dr.  Abbott's 
letter.  The  next  is  a  letter  from  Dr.  Stoughton.  He 
says :  "  There  would  be  no  necessity  to  entreat  me  to 
attend  the  meeting  you  purpose  to  hold,  were  it  in  my 
power  to  be  present  ;  but  I  stand  engaged  to  visit  Italy 
with  some  of  my  family  next  month,  and  I  do  not  expect 
to  be  back  till  the  latter  part  of  May.  Dr.  Channing  has 
been  to  me  from  my  youth  a  favorite  author.  Though,  of 
course,  I  did  not  accept  some  of  his  theological  opinions, 
yet  I  derived  from  some  of  his  discourses  much  spiritual 
profit  and  enjoyment.  They  had  an  elevating  and  purify- 
ing effect,  which  I  hope  never  to  lose.  There  is  a  passage 
in  his  sermon  on  the  character  of  Christ,  which  I  have  often 
quoted  in  the  pulpit,  and  which  now  comes  to  me  in  my 
solitude  with  a  peculiar  force,  as  I  think  of  those  who  are 
gone,  and  of  that  blessed  Saviour  who  has  taken  them  to 
himself :  '  He  lives  and  reigns.  With  a  clear,  calm  faith,  I 
see  him  in  that  state  of  glory;  and  I  confidently  expect,  at 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  383 

no  distant  period,  to  see  him  face  to  face.  We  have,  in- 
deed, no  absent  friend  whom  we  shall  so  surely  meet.' 
Dr.  Channing's  advocacy  of  negro  emancipation,  when  the 
name  of  it  was  cast  out  as  evil,  and  the  cause  in  Amer- 
ica was  trampled  under  foot,  awakened  my  warmest  enthu- 
siasm ;  and,  in  his  just  views  of  war  and  its  accompani- 
ments of  different  kinds, —  deceitful  hero-worship,  false 
splendor  and  glory,  as  well  as  slaughter  and  sin, —  I  fully 
sympathized.  His  thoughts  on  the  ministry  for  the  poor, 
the  Sunday-school,  the  obligations  of  a  State  to  take  care 
and  watch  over  the  moral  health  of  its  members, —  these 
bore  a  high  value  in  my  estimation,  and  were  often  pondered 
by  me  in  my  early  days,  when  engaged  in  arduous  pastoral 
work."  One  or  two  lines  from  Dr.  Raleigh's  letter  you 
would  like  to  hear.  He  is  referring  to  the  movements  in 
favor  of  reform  which  Channing  advocated  at  a  time  when 
they  had  but  few  friends.  "  More  than  forty  years  ago," 
he  continues,  "  when  I  was  hardly  more  than  a  lad,  the 
perusal  of  some  of  his  writings  gave  my  mind  one  of  the 
most  powerful  and  freshening  impulses  it  has  ever  received, 
and  one  of  the  most  lasting ;  for  I  believe  that  what  I  then 
received  has  mingled  congenially  and  wholesomely  with 
later  thoughts,  and  with  some  of  my  deepest  convictions. 
I  write  these  few  lines  to  you,  that  you  may  understand 
that  I  am  not  excusing  myself  without  a  cause,"  and  he 
wishes  that  his  name  should  be  mentioned  as  sympathizing 
with  the  object,  of  this  meeting.  I  can  only  mention  to 
you  that  I  have  a  letter  from  Mathew  Jochumsson,  who 
is  carrying  on  work  and  preaching  the  gospel  according 
to  the  free  interpretation  in  Iceland.  He  sends  his  hearty 
congratulations  to  this  meeting,  and  wishes  that  his  name 
should  be  mentioned  in  connection  with  this  grand  occa- 
sion. We  have  also  received  a  letter  from  Mr.  William 
Rathbone,  to  which  justice  c(nikl    not   be  done  by  extracts, 


3S4  CHANNMN(i    CKNTENARY. 

though  time  will  not  allow  of  its  being  read  in  full  ;  also  a 
telegram  from  the  Executive  Committee  of  the  Protestant 
Union  of  Germany,  to  this  effect:  "The  Executive  Com- 
mittee of  the  German  Protestantenverein  sends  its  cordial 
good  wishes  for  the  celebration  of  the  hundredth  birthday 
of  Dr.  William  Ellery  Channing,  the  great  modern  apostle 
of  the  true  humanity  of  Jesus,  the  defender  of  the  rights  of 
man  against  slavery  in  Church  and  State.  May  his  ideas 
penetrate  the  communities  of  the  Old  and  New  World, 
and  unite  them  into  one  great  Christian  Church  according 
to  the  Channing  ideal  !  "  I  might  mention  the  names  of 
a  number  of  gentlemen  who  have  sent  letters,  and  with 
them  sentences  of  very  expressive  sympathy  with  the 
object  of  the  meeting;  but  it  would  detain  you  too  long 
from  the  speeches  to  which  you  are  to  listen. 

Rev.  Dr.  Martineau. — I  may  venture  to  say  one  word  on 
behalf  of  the  Dean  of  Westminster.  I  the  more  readily 
spoke  to  him  about  this  meeting  some  weeks  ago,  because 
he  had  told  me  that,  when  he  was  in  America,  he  believed 
he  never  preached  a  single  sermon  without  mentioning  the 
honored  name  of  Channing.  I  knew  therefore  that  he  felt 
an  interest  in  the  works  and  in  the  life  of  Channing.  When 
this  occasion  was  named  to  him,  he  took  it  up  with  great 
interest  and  zeal,  entered  it  in  his  diary  as  an  engagement, 
and  most  fully  intended  to  be  with  us  this  night.  But  after- 
wards I  had  a  letter  from  him,  in  which  he  explained  that 
a  very  unusual  pressure  of  work  had  considerably  broken 
him  down,  and  unfitted  him  for  the  pressure  of  the  season 
coming  on  in  London,  that  he  found  it  was  absolutely  nec- 
essary for  him  to  seize  some  opportunity  of  quitting  London 
and  being  in  the  country.  The  only  days  that  were  at  his 
disposal  for  that  purpose  were,  unfortunately,  precisely  the 
days  including  this  meeting.  He  is  now  in  the  Island  of 
Guernsey  for  the  sake  of  a  little  refreshment ;  and  he  writes 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  385 

to  me,  begging  me  to  explain  this  matter,  and  to  say  that 
he  trusts  that  neither  within  nor  without  the  limits  of  the 
Church  will  his  absence  be  mistrusted  or  misunderstood. 

The  Chairman. —  Ladies  and  gentlemen,  we  have  assem- 
bled here  this  evening  to  celebrate  the  centenary  of  the  birth 
of  that  man  of  venerated  memory,  Dr.  William  Ellery  Chan- 
ning ;  and  we  may  feel  that,  in  this  endeavor  to  pay  hom- 
age where  so  much  admiration  and  gratitude  are  due,  we  are 
joining  with  thousands  who  are  now  meeting  in  other  lands 
and  in  far  distant  places  to  celebrate  the  event.  They  are 
refreshing,  as  we  hope  to  do,  their  minds  and  hearts  with 
deep  draughts  from  the  well  of  his  intense  religious  devo- 
tion at  these  memorial  meetings.  We  welcome  with  out- 
stretched, cordial  hands  all  lovers  of  Channing  from  what- 
ever church  or  communion  they  may  come ;  for  in  all 
churches  and  climes  good  men  are  to  be  found,  who  know 
and  revere  and  love  the  name  of  Channing.  His  words  and 
his  w^orks  are  cosmopolitan  and  for  all  time.  They  are 
words  of  love  and  reverence  and  wisdom  concerning  the 
Eternal  Father  of  mankind,  and  of  man  as  God's  child  and 
our  brother  wherever  he  may  be  found.  And  it  is  in  this 
spirit  of  our  great  Exemplar,  Christ,  in  whose  steps  Chan- 
ning so  humbly,  so  lovingly,  so  confidingly  walked,  that  we 
welcome  all  here  to-night  to  assist  in  honoring  this  truly 
great,  this  wonderfully  God-loving  man,  and  to<lo  what  may 
in  us  lie  to  extend  still  wider  and  more  fully  the  knowledge 
and  appreciation  of  his  works  and  of  the  spirit  of  their 
author.  We  shall  thus  fulfil  the  cherished  wish  of  his  life 
to  extend  more  fully  this  influence,  and  make  it  a  common 
property,  universal  everywhere, —  that  ennobling,  glorious, 
intense  consciousness  of  the  Deity  that  he  felt  as  the  loving 
parent,  the  support,  and  at  the  same  time  the  reason  of  man's 
existence.  If  for  a  moment  we  look  back  over  the  pages  of 
history  to  the  surroundings  of  Channing  this  day  hundred 
20 


^86  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

years,  and  consider  the  progress  which  the  more  educated 
and  refined  portion  of  the  world  has  made  since  then,  politi- 
cally, morally,  socially,  and  religiously,  we  see  and  feel  the 
effect  that  Channing  and  scores  of  God-loving,  God-fearing 
men  like  him  have  had  in  purifying  and  ennobling  their 
race,  and  may  feel  well  strengthened  by  the  knowledge  of 
that  progress  to  strive  to  keep  it  alive  and  growing.  The 
poet  says,  and  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  there  is  great 
force  in  his  words  :  — 

"  Where  is  the  victory  of  the  grave  ? 
What  dust  upon  the  spirit  lies  ? 
God  keeps  the  sacred  life  he  gave ; 
The  prophet  never  dies." 

I  shall  now  beg  our  good  friend.  Dr.  Martineau,  the  Prin- 
cipal of  Manchester  New  College,  to  commence  the  proceed- 
ings of  this  evening  by  a  short  address. 

DE.  MAETDTEAU'S  ADDEESS. 

The  Rev.  Dr.  Martineau,  who  was  received  with  loud  ap- 
plause, said  :  Mr.  Chairman  and  friends,  if  I  accepted  the 
office  of  opening  the  proceedings  of  this  evening,  it  is  be- 
cause of  the  century  upon  which  we  are  to  look  back  to- 
night, as  I  have  myself  an  experience  of  three-fourths.  But 
I  can  assure"  you  that  this  is  but  a  very  partial  advantage, 
for  the  debt  which  it  piles  up  is  great ;  and  to  attempt  to 
compress  the  gratitude  of  sixty  years  in  the  course  of  the 
words  of  half  an  hour  is  certainly  an  attempt  not  very  likely 
to  be  successful.  Your  Chairman  has  promised  for  me  that 
my  address  shall  be  short.  Sir,  I  will  do  my  best  to  make 
it  so;  but,  if  my  duty  is  to  lay  compendiously  before  the 
meeting  the  elements  of  the  great  subject  which  engages 
us  here,  that  subject  is  so  rich  and  various  and  many-sided 
that  it  is  hardly  possible  without  a  considerable  use  of  time 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  387 

to  perform  the  task  that  is  committed  to  me.  I  shall  most 
compendiously  do  so,  I  think,  if  I  try  first  of  all  to  sketch 
slightly  the  growth  of  the  characteristics  of  Channing's 
mind  and  life,  and  then,  having  viewed  them  as  they  run 
down  in  time  from  his  biography,  to  review  them  with 
the  intention  to  select,  if  possible,  the  regulating  principle, 
the  central  thought,  ideal,  or  faith  which  forms  the  unity 
of  the  whole.  You  all  know  that  he  was  born  at  Newport 
in  Rhode  Island  ;  and  there  is  so  much,  we  are  told,  in  the 
bright  skies  and  the  beautiful  undulating  surface,  and  the 
fine  sands  and  rocks  of  that  island,  so  much  to  tempt  one 
to  say  that  they  may  have  exercised  a  great  influence  in 
the  formation  of  such  a  mind  as  Channing's,  that  I  might 
easily  be  tempted  to  dwell  upon  it.  But  there  are  many 
children  that  were  born  under  precisely  those  influences, 
in  the  same  year,  at  the  same  time,  and  those  children  did 
not  become  Ellery  Channings.  Therefore,  I  dismiss  these 
altogether ;  and  I  do  not  suppose  that  we  are  to  look  upon 
the  rocks  of  Rhode  Island  to  see  inscribed  upon  them  the 
future  characteristics  of  our  saint.  Nevertheless,  during: 
the  youth  of  Channing  there  were  some  small  circumstances 
which  really  did,  I  believe,  plant  a  germ  of  the  future  man  ; 
and  it  is  not  infrequent  that  during  the  life  of  childhood 
incidents  that  appear  to  adults  to  be  but  trifling  produce 
an  effect  that  rarely  fails  to  be  considerable  in  after-life. 

I  find  indications  that  almost  all  the  great  causes  in  which 
Channing  enlisted  were  more  or  less  introduced  to  his  intei"- 
est  in  his  childhood.  Rhode  Island  was  at  the  time  of  his 
boyhood  engaged  in  that  abominable  commerce,  the  slave- 
trade.  Just  as  the  merchants  of  Liverpool  and  of  Bristol 
at  that  time  carried  their  cargo  of  African  negroes  to  sell 
them  to  the  Western  world,  so  the  merchants  of  Rhode  Isl- 
and were  engaged  in  this  trade  also.  If  this  were  all,  it 
might  have   produced  no  effect.     Usually,  it  was  a  subject 


388  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

never  adverted  to  in  the  place ;  but  there  was  one  venerable 
and  faithful  man,  with  the  old  Puritan  spirit  in  his  heart, 
Dr.  Hopkins,  a  celebrated  disciple  of  Jonathan  Edwards, 
who  was  preaching  in  that  place  when  Channing  was  young. 
And  Hopkins  saw,  what  apparently  no  other  person  there 
saw,  that  the  slave-trade  was  a  wickedness  and  an  abomina- 
tion ;  and  he  preached  from  the  pulpit  openly,  notwithstand- 
ing the  resistance  of  his  flock  and  the  unpopularity  which  it 
occasioned.  This  aroused  a  controversy  in  the  place  ;  and 
Channing  as  a  boy  knew  that  there  were  two  sides  to  this 
question,  was  brought  to  reflect  upon  it,  and  his  sensitive 
and  gentle  nature  began  to  work  upon  the  merits  of  this 
question  from  that  time.  Again,  it  would  appear  that  the 
question  of  temperance,  in  which  he  took  so  much  interest, 
was  not  altogether  asleep,  even  in  those  early  days.  Though 
the  habits  of  the  place  were  strongly  convivial,  yet  there 
was  at  least  one  man  who  held  up  his  protest  against  it. 
There  was  a  Baptist  clergyman,  a  certain  Father  Thurston, 
who  was  in  the  habit  of  preaching  against  intemperance,  of 
testifying  in  favor  of  total  abstinence  ;  and,  what  is  more,  he 
bore  his  testimony  in  his  life.  The  man  was  excessively  poor  : 
he  was  not  able  to  live  upon  his  small  stipend,  and  in  the 
week-day  he  eked  out  his  scanty  means  —  how  do  you  sup- 
pose .''  He  took  the  tools,  the  chopper,  of  a  journeyman 
cooper,  and  worked  in  the  cooper's  yard,  and  preached  upon 
the  Sunday  to  his  people.  He  made  a  restriction  for  his 
work :  he  declined  to  make  any  hogsheads  or  puncheons 
which  were  employed  to  carry  wines  and  spirits,  and 
he  made  it  a  stipulation  with  his  employers  that  he  should 
make  nothing  but  pails  and  water-bottles ;  and  this  whim- 
sical testimony  to  the  value  of  temperance  made  an  effect 
upon  the  heart  of  that  boy,  and  the  subject  never  after- 
wards slept.  So  that  there  were  germs,  after  all,  of  the 
future  Channing  even  in  these  early  experiences.     Nay,  the 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  389 

sincerity  and  depth  of  his  religion,  and  also  some  of  his  her- 
esies,—  these  also  were  planted  in  him  by  his  experience  as 
a  boy.  He  tells  the  story  of  his  being  taken  by  his  father 
to  hear  a  celebrated  preacher  some  miles  from  Newport ;  and 
the  sermon  was  one  of  those  dreadful  sermons  upon  human 
perdition  and  hell-fire,  which  so  often  strike  into  the  heart 
of  young  persons  with  terror.  This  tender-hearted  boy  was 
sunk  into  anguish  by  the  hearing  of  this  sermon,  the  more 
so  when,  on  coming  out  of  the  place,  he  heard  his  father 
make  a  remark  to  a  member  of  the  congregation,  "Very 
sound  doctrine,  sir."  Well,  then,  he  thought.  All  this  is 
true,  then,  is  it  .■"  When  he  went  home,  he  sank  into 
silence  in  the  carriage,  thinking  that  his  father  would 
make  some  remark  upon  this  ;  but,  to  his  astonishment,  his 
father  broke  out  into  a  jolly  whistle,  whistled  a  tune,  and 
in  that  way  went  home.  He  thought  when  he  got  home  he 
would  tell  the  dreadful  news  he  had  heard ;  but  no,  his  father 
kicked  off  his  boots,  took  up  his  newspaper,  flung  himself 
into  his  easy-chair,  and  enjoyed  himself  at  his  ease  for  the 
rest  of  the  day.  This  produced  a  profound  impression.  It 
left  upon  his  mind  not  a  distinct  conviction,  but  a  conscious- 
ness of  an  inconsistency  between  the  things  taught  in  the 
pulpit  and  the  life  that  was  lived  by  men  in  reality. 
No  doubt  he  from  that  time  began  to  make  allowances 
for  that ;  and  he  must  have  thought  that  it  was  no  real 
voice  of  God  that  uttered  those  dreadful  thunders,  that  it 
was  only  the  echoes  of  echoes  which  men  themselves  hardly 
believe  at  the  moment  that  they  spoke  them.  Thus  the 
very  root  of  sincerity,  and  at  the  same  time  the  root  of 
heresy,  was  planted  in  that  boy  by  such  experience.  After 
he  had  lived  about  to  the  age  of  fifteen,  he  went  to  college; 
and  at  college  there  were  two  or  three  additional  elements 
contributed  to  his  character.  One  of  those  arose  from  his 
falling  upon  one  or  two  books  which  are  now  almost  forgot- 


390  CHANNINC;    CENTKNAKY. 

ten,  but  which  produced  a  revolution  in  his  character.  Hith- 
erto, he  had  heard  upon  the  subject  of  human  nature  and 
moral  philosophy  nothing  but  the  French  doctrine  of  self- 
love  alone  as  the  animating  principle  of  human  nature  on 
the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  the  Calvinistic  doctrine  of 
the  absolutism  of  God,  which  rendered  all  morality  arbitrary, 
and  made  things  right  and  wrong  simply  because  they  were 
appointed  by  the  will  of  God.  When  he  went  to  Hutcheson 
and  to  Ferguson,  he  found  a  different  doctrine, —  a  doctrine 
that  the  roots  of  morality  were  planted  in  human  nature  ; 
that  there  was  an  intuition  of  right  and  wrong  in  every  con- 
science; that  man  was  not  intended  to  love  himself  alone, 
but  was  susceptible  of  disinterested  affection  ;  nay,  that  these 
disinterested  affections  were  often  more  powerful  than  all 
the  pleadings  of  conscience,  and  carried  men  into  the  noblest 
self-forgetfulness  and  self-sacrifice.  This  conception  laid 
powerful  hold  of  his  mind,  and  from  that  time  he  felt  as  if 
he  were  delivered  into  a  fresh  atmosphere,  and  able  to  look 
upon  mankind  with  different  eyes.  The  other  fresh  influence 
borne  upon  him  was  from  a  profound  study  of  the  evidences 
and  characteristics  of  Christianity,  which  had  never  before 
been  brought  before  him  excepting  through  the  medium  of 
the  pulpit.  The  moment  he  came  in  contact  with  Christian- 
ity, interpreted  by  his  now  illuminated  and  liberated  nature, 
he  felt  its  congeniality.  He  said,  I  found  that  for  which  I 
was  made,  and  from  that  time  I  made  my  vow  to  devote 
myself  to  the  service  of  God  in  teaching  the  universal  prin- 
ciples of  Christianity.  After  his  college  life  was  over,  he 
took  a  tutorship  :  the  tutorship  was  in  Virginia,  and  it  brought 
him  into  immediate  and  personal  contact  with  slavery.  It 
made  him  acquainted  with  the  kind  of  society  which  slavery 
creates,  and  so  uncongenial  was  it  that  he  felt  himself  in  a 
condition  of  almost  absolute  solitude.  He  went  to  that  place 
with  vigorous  health,  with  high  spirits,  a  perfect  athlete  in 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  39 1 

his  activity ;  but  that  solitude  sunk  him  into  depression. 
He  became  ascetic  and  miserable ;  and  at  the  end  of  four 
years  he  left  that  position  with  broken  health,  an  invalid 
filled  with  infirmities  from  which  he  never  afterwards  recov- 
ered. But  one  influence  had  been  poured  upon  his  mind. 
He  had  never  before  studied  social  questions.  The  touch  of 
slavery  induced  him  to  do  so.  For  a  time,  he  fell  under 
the  fascination  of  some  of  those  speculative  writers  that  so 
abounded  in  that  time,  who  held  up  the  promise  of  a  golden 
age  for  society.  I  refer  to  Rousseau,  to  Godwin,  to  Mary 
Wollstonecraft,  to  the  English  writers  who  called  themselves 
Pantisocratists ;  that  is  to  say,  Southey  and  Coleridge,  who 
had  intended  to  go  to  America,  to  form  an  ideal  society 
there.  These  speculations  fascinated  him;  and  he  was  deliv- 
ered from  these  delusions  only  by  that  previous  conversion, 
you  may  say,  to  the  life  of  God,  which  enabled  him  to  trans- 
figure this  mere  picture  of  a  secular  golden  age  into  the  hopQ 
and  promise  of  a  true  kingdom  of  God.  With  that  experi- 
ence, I  take  it,  the  various  directions  of  his  mind  and  affec- 
tions were  all  brought  out.  No  doubt,  his  nature  grew 
enormously ;  but  it  grew  in  all  dimensions,  grew  symmetri- 
cally upon  all  sides.  And  I  cannot  see  that  there  is  any 
fresh  empire  which  he  conquered  after  that  time.  He  set- 
tled in  Boston  for  a  ministry  of  nearly  forty  years,  a  ministry 
first  of  all  alone  for  twenty  years,  afterwards  for  sixteen 
years  with  a  colleague  to  help  him,  and  with  an  interval 
between  of  two  years,  highly  interesting  years,  in  which  he 
visited  this  country  and  other  countries  of  Europe.  I  will 
only  mention  one  or  two  little  things  with  regard  to  this 
particular  visit,  which  I  myself  well  remember.  The  two 
persons  he  was  most  anxious  to  see  were  the  two  poets, 
Coleridge  and  Wordsworth.  He  sought  Coleridge  first  of  all. 
Now  Coleridge  was  a  man  who  at  that  time  was  distinguished 
for  the  extraordinary  acrimony  with  which  he  attacked  the 


39-  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

thcolocy  which  Channing  himself  professed.  Coleridge 
had  been  a  preacher  of  the  theology  in  his  youth,  but  he 
had  changed,  as  most  persons  know  ;  and,  like  many  con- 
verts, he  showed  peculiar  bitterness  toward  the  views  which 
he  had  renounced.  Nevertheless,  when  he  came  in  personal 
contact  with  Channing,  there  was  something  so  winning, 
something  so  deep  in  his  spiritual  nature,  that  his  prejudices 
seemed  to  be  entirely  conquered,  and  he  used  this  remarkable 
expression  after  he  had  left  him.  He  said  :  "  Dr.  Channing 
loves  the  good  as  the  good,  and  the  true  as  the  true,  with 
the  righteous  subordination  of  the  latter  to  the  former,  that 
absolute  justice  to  both  which  I  declare  from  my  heart  of 
hearts  appears  to  me  to  constitute  the  very  rarest  of 
human  characters."  Wordsworth  he  visited  from  Gras- 
mere,  where  he  was  staying ;  but  it  might  well  be  wished 
that  the  long  conversations  that  they  had  had  been  reported 
to  us.  They  were  held,  however,  under  conditions  not  very 
favorable  to  a  report.  He  called  upon  Wordsworth  ;  and, 
after  a  short  stay,  the  philosopher,  who  was  very  fond  of  a 
walk,  proposed  to  return  on  foot  to  Grasmere.  After  a  little 
while,  Channing  be,came  exhausted,  within  half  a  mile,  and 
proposed  that  they  should  ride  the  rest  of  the  way.  Well, 
they  both  mounted  the  vehicle,  and  resumed  their  conversa- 
tion ;  but  the  vehicle  was  a  one-horse  cart,  and  in  those  pre- 
macadamite  days  the  roads  of  the  Lake  country  were  not 
particularly  smooth,  and  this  was  not  exactly  a  position  in 
which  to  hold  a  Socratic  dialogue,  and  their  speculations  no 
doubt  were  shaken  to  a  mere  fragmentary  philosophy,  the 
elements  of  which  have  never  been  reported  to  us.  He  left 
this  country  without  visiting  scarcely  any  of  the  friends  who 
are  connected  with  him  socially.  Well,  now,  I  regard  the 
period  of  his  life  that  followed,  by  far  the  most  prolific 
period,  as  that  of  which  I  should  say  the  least.  The  period 
of  his  home  ministry  was  that  of  his  great  sermons, —  the 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  393 

period  which  determined  and  defined  his  theology.  The 
period  of  his  colleagueship  was  the  period  of  his  great 
essays, —  the  essays  upon  Milton,  upon  Fenelon,  upon  Napo- 
leon Bonaparte ;  and  subsequently  it  was  the  period  also  of 
his  noble  and  manly  civil  action  upon  the  subject  of  slavery, 
and  his  splendid  manifestoes  against  that  abomination. 
Upon  that  subject,  I  shall  say  nothing. 

I  will  now,  therefore,  advert  to  the  second  part  of  what  I 
have  to  say ;  and  that  is.  What  is  the  spirit  of  the  man,  and 
what  is  the  unity  which  blends  together  the  parts  of  this 
various  life .''  I  will  only  make  one  further  remark  before  I 
proceed  to  this,  upon  the  personal  features  of  his  life.  There 
is  nothing  strikes  me  more  than  this  in  it.  He  began  his 
ministry  in  a  kind  of  plaintive,  pathetic,  almost  sad  tone, 
with  a  profound  sense  of  human  evils,  and  with  the  deepest 
and  almost  desponding  humility.  The  last  years  of  his  life 
were  all  brightness  :  he  declared  that  the  perfection  which 
was  revealed  to  the  human  heart  was  never  intended  to  de- 
press us  and  to  make  us  feel  despair  at  our  shortcomings,  but 
to  present  us  with  a  kindling  object,  to  present  us  with  our 
future  destiny, —  the  destiny  which  we  may  reach,  if  only 
we  pursue  it  in  faith  and  love.  Accordingly,  his  depression 
ceased.  His  joy  in  nature,  his  delight  in  his  friends,  his 
hopes  for  society,  became  more  and  more  exhilarated  the 
older  he  grew  ;  and,  at  last,  his  last  days  seemed  to  be  almost 
days  of  1  riumph.  But  very  few  weeks  before  he  died,  he  de- 
livered one  of  the  most  delightful  addresses  which  is  to  be 
found  in  his  works.  It  was  to  commemorate  for  the  third 
time  the  emancipation  by  England  of  her  West  Indian  slaves. 
It  was  delivered  upon  the  ist  of  August,  the  day  when  the 
emancipation  took  place  ;  and  he  said  in  a  letter  to  a  friend, 
"I  have  written  this  under  the  inspiration  of  the  mountains; 
and  the  mountains,  you  know,  arc  the  holy  land  of  liberty." 
That  address  breathes  the  very  spirit  of  freedom  and  of  joy  : 


394  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

it  breathes  a  rare  elevation,  and  it  commands  a  wide  horizon 
of  human  affairs.  A  few  weeks  after  that,  his  call  came  to 
him.  He  was  sitting  among  the  Green  Mountains  of  Ver- 
mont ;  and  at  sundown,  upon  the  2d  of  October,  1842,  as  his 
face  was  turned  to  the  window  to  see  the  sinking  glow  upon 
the  hills,  his  call  came,  and  his  spirit  passed  away  as  if  in 
pursuit  of  the  sinking  light  which  he  loved,  as  if  he  could 
not  tear  himself  away  from  it ;  and  he  entered  that  perfect 
life  which  ever  moved  before  his  thought,  and  of  which  he 
has  left  us  the  prophecy  and  the  foreview.  Who  would  not 
utter  the  prayer  that  so  the  Father  of  Lights  may  glorify  for 
us  the  west,  when  we  shall  sink  to  final  rest }  Now,  I  take 
it  that  throughout  this  tender  and  great  life  one  thought 
and  one  faith  constituted  its  cardinal  point.  I  mean  the 
faith  in  moral  perfection  as  the  essence  of  God,  and  as  the 
supreme  end,  least  developed,  of  our  fellow-men  as  having 
potentially  within  them  that  very  perfection  which  we  recog- 
nize in  the  saints  and  heroes  of  mankind.  It  furnished  him 
also  with  his  social  doctrine;  for,  if  that  be  the  nature  and 
destination  of  man,  then  every  power  which  suppresses  or 
which  perverts  this  moral  nature,  or  prevents  the  unfolding 
of  this  mental  and  spiritual  nature  of  man,  is  a  wrong  done 
to  our  fellow-men.  But,  if  it  can  be  remedied,  it  must  be 
remedied.  Therefore  the  State  or  society  must  exercise  a 
brotherly  guardianship  over  the  poorer  members,  to  remedy 
their  ignorance ;  over  its  elements  in  thraldom,  to  redeem 
their  slavery ;  over  all  who  are  put  down  by  force  ;  over,  for 
e.xample,  the  contentions  of  nations,  which  might  be  settled, 
or  ought  to  be  settled,  by  reason  or  by  right  from  the 
necessity  of  settling  them  by  the  barbarous  resort  to  force. 
All  these  social  doctrines  flow  at  once  from  this  one  principle. 
So  with  regard  to  the  future  of  each  other :  who  can 
despair  of  the  future  of  a  being  constituted  as  Channing  con- 
ceived man  to  be  constituted  ?     Is  that  reason  which  is  the 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  395 

organ  of  truth,  is  that  conscience  which  is  the  instrument 
for  perceiving  right,  is  that  sense  of  beauty  which  is  the 
adornment  of  life,  to  be  forever  under  a  cloud,  forever  sup- 
pressed, and  never  to  burst  through  and  declare  what  its 
efficacy  and  prerogatives  are  ?  It  is  impossible.'  He,  there- 
fore, anticipated  that  there  must  be  a  period  of  society  in 
which  all  these  faculties  should  assert  their  prerogatives 
and  attain  their  true  dignity.  And  so  of  the  future  of  the 
individual  soul :  one  who  measures  it  by  Channing's  standard 
cannot  but  feel  that  the  small  limits  of  human  years  give 
but  inadequate  scope  for  the  assertion  of  its  real  powers,  and 
that  another  and  a  greater  future  must  await  it, —  a  future 
which  will  be  proportionate  to  its  conceptions  and  which 
will  realize  its  ideals.  Therefore,  I  say  that  this  one  idea 
is  capable  of  application  throughout  the  whole  of  life ;  and 
accordingly  one  thing  is  noticeable  by  every  reader  of 
Channing, —  he  tries  everything  really  by  this  standard. 
Whatever  be  his  subject,  whether  he  follows  the  filibuster- 
ing troops  into  Texas,  whether  he  follows  the  armies  of 
Napoleon  or  looks  into  the  garrets  of  Boston  under  the 
guidance  of  Tuckerman,  whether  he  treats  of  the  character 
of  Milton  or  of  Fenelon,  whatever  the  subject  is,  the  same 
great  thoughts  are  forever  returning, —  the  grandeur  of  the 
human  soul,  the  solemnity  of  duty,  the  difference  between 
false  and  true  glory, —  these  are  the  thoughts  that  contin- 
ually turn  up.  I  have  heard  fastidious  litteratem's  com- 
plain of  this  monotony  of  Channing's  writings,  of  this 
uniformity.  Why,  I  say  you  might  as  well  complain  of 
a  teacher  of  mechanics  that  he  wearies  you  with  the  law 
of  gravitation,  because  that  is  a  formula  that  he  has  to 
apply  to  every  problem.  One  of  the  great  signs  of  excel- 
lence of  a  large  grand  formula  is  that  there  is  no  end  to 
the  cases  which  it  will  resolve,  and  any  one  who  can  place 
himself  in  possession  of  such  a  one  as  will  solve  all  prob- 


396  CHAXNIXG    CENTENARY. 

Icms  takes  his  stand  upon  the  highest  altitudes  of  human 
intelligence.  I  know  that  this  faith  is  looked  upon  in 
our  day  as  a  kind  of  romance.  The  heart  of  the  pres- 
ent age  is  greatly  depressed  by  the  sense  of  the  evils  of 
society  and  of  the  degradations  of  large  portions  of  man- 
kind. Well,  I  even  venture  to  say  that  this  very  feeling; 
instead  of  contradicting  the  doctrine  of  Channing,  is  the 
strongest  confirmation  of  it.  What  inference  do  we  draw 
from  these  sad  and  deplorable  phenomena  .-'  Do  we  draw 
the  inference  that  our  nature  is  made  for  them,  that  it 
is  upon  the  level,  that  they  are  the  proper  standard, 
that  there  is  nothing  else  whatsoever  in  that  nature  except 
that  which  is  se.en  upon  those  low  steps  of  development.' 
If  so,  I  say  these  evils  would  never  sadden  us  at  all :  if 
they  were  native  to  us,  if  they  were  what  we  were  made 
for,  they  would  no  more  sadden  us  than  would  the  lower 
destination  of  the  brutes.  They  would  be  akin,  they  would 
be  in  harmony  with,  the  measure  of  our  powers  ;  and  the 
reason  why  we  are  depressed  is  because  we  cannot  bear 
to  see  a  nature  so  great  in  a  plight  so  vile.  It  is, 
therefore,  a  testimony  to  the  inner  consciousness  we  all 
have  that  we  are  made  for  better  things  ;  and  accordingly 
the  very  tragic  character  of  this,  the  very  pathos  of  pessi- 
mism, is  actually  lent  to  it  by  the  doctrine  that  it  contradicts. 
It  is,  therefore,  quite  possible  to  face  these  great  evils,  and 
yet  at  the  same  time  to  hold  this  great  faith.  Surely,  I 
need  not  remind  you  of  Him  who  said,  "  Be  ye  perfect  as 
your  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect."  Did  that  imply  a  for- 
getfulness  of  human  sorrows,  of  human  guilt,  of  human  sin, 
or  was  this  sublime  precept  given  by  One  before  whom  the 
whole  dark  picture  was  revealed  more  than  it  has  ever 
been  to  any  human  eye  .-'  So  it  was,  as  it  seems  to  me,  in 
Channing.  He  had  a  mind  singularly  sensitive  to  even  the 
minor  evils  of  life :  he  had  what  would  be  called  a  kind  of 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  397 

fastidiousness,  which  would  recoil  from  every  thing  which 
was  inharmonious,  which  was  ugly,  which  was  base.  You 
cannot  imagine  a  nature  that  shrank  more  from  evil,  and 
yet  he  never  hid  it  from  himself.  Who  has  given  descrip- 
tions of  it  that  are  more  passionate,  that  are  more  awful, 
that  are  more  touching  ?  And  yet,  with  this  picture  before 
him,  his  faith  grew  brighter  and  brighter  as  his  years  passed 
on.  He  said  at  last :  "  What  mysteries  we  are  to  ourselves  ! 
Here  am  I,  finding  the  cup  of  life  sweeter  as  I  approach  to 
what  are  called  its  dregs  ;  seeing  the  face  of  man  more  hope- 
fully, seeing  nature  more  glorious,  and  having  the  brightest 
hopes  for  society  at  the  very  time  when  I  am  most  conscious 
of  its  evils."  This,  I  take  it,  is  a  tender  and  a  sublime  feel- 
ing, which  shows  the  absurdity  of  those  oscillations  between 
optimism  and  pessimism,  which  we  find  in  weaker  minds 
and  weaker  schools.  The  intensity  of  this  faith  in  Chan- 
ning  showed  itself  in  various  ways,  but  especially  in  this. 
Throughout  his  discourse,  you  find  a  perpetual  sighing,  as 
it  were,  for  some  power  to  impress  his  convictions  upon  the 
minds  of  others.  He  says  again  and  again :  "  Oh,  that  I 
had  power  to  carry  to  your  hearts  the  conviction  of  this 
great  destiny  of  yours  !  Or  if  I  had  but  a  voice  that  could 
reach  your  soul,  to  convince  you  of  that  which  God  has 
designed  for  you  !  "  Well,  my  friends,  I  ask  you.  May  we 
not  say,  this  night  especially,  that  that  prayer  has  been 
answered  ?  That  word  of  his  surely  has  not  gone  forth 
from  him  and  been  made  void.  You  cannot  say  that  it 
is  limited.  Is  it  limited  to  his  own  land  .-'  Is  it  limited 
to  the  English  tongue  .-*  No  :  from  every  part,  we  have 
almost  a  repetition  of  the  miracle  of  Pentecost.  From 
every  tongue  where  European  civilization  spreads,  from 
Ireland  to  Italy,  that  word  of  his  has  gone  forth.  And  if 
those  who  have  been  touched  to  the  heart  by  that  word 
could  fling  their  testimony  into  this  hall  at  this  very  hour. 


398  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

I  ask  you,  do  you  not  think  we  should  stand  in  presence  of 
a  glorious  chorus, —  a  chorus  of  the  living  and  the  dead,  a 
chorus  which  commemorates  the  past,  and  a  chorus  which 
promises  the  future  ?  And  surely  we  may  bless  God  with 
a  thankful  heart  that  he,  being  dead,  so  speaketh. 

REV.  J.  BALDWIN  BROWN'S  ADDRESS. 

The  Rev.  J.  Baldwin  Brown. —  The  brief  paper  which  I 
have  undertaken  to  read  to  you  to-night  will  concern  itself 
entirely  with  the  character  and  work  of  Dr.  Channing  as  a 
spiritual  teacher.  To  that  I  confine  myself,  for  I  under- 
stand that  the  topics  have  been  so  distributed  as  to  secure 
some  sort  of  unity  in  the  business  of  the  evening. 

St.  Peter  little  susi^ected  the  range  of  the  emancipation 
of  thought  and  spirit  of  which  he  was  the  instrument,  when 
he  "  perceived  that  in  every  nation  he  that  feareth  God  and 
worketh  righteousness  is  accepted  with  him."  God  is  ever 
guiding  us  into  the  same  truth  in  relation  to  the  creeds,  but 
we  have  not  fully  perceived  it  yet.  In  truth,  it  is  hard  work 
for  us,  as  it  was  hard  work  for  Peter.  But  we  must  master 
the  lesson,  or  this  weak,  struggling,  distracted  condition  of 
the  Church  will  prolong  itself,  to  the  sorrow  and  shame  of 
all  Christian  souls.  Few  sentences  more  blighting  to  the 
germs  which  ripen  into  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit  have  been 
spoken  in  Christendom  than  the  celebrated  judgment  that 
"the  virtues  of  the  heathen  are  but  splendid  vices."  These 
words,  and  the  thought  which  inspired  them,  have  made  the 
Church  the  witness  against,  and  not  to,  the  great  human 
world  through  all  the  Christian  ages,  and  have  filled  the 
sphere  of  Christian  history  with  bitter  enmities  and  fierce 
contentions,  instead  of  with  a  light  of  divine  love,  golden 
and  glorious  as  dawn,  stealing  on  by  gentle  and  yet  tri- 
umphant processes,  and  at  length  flooding  the  earth   with 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  399 

the  splendor  of  the  perfect  day.  There  can  be  no  question, 
I  fear,  that  the  temptation  of  the  churches  is  to  transfer  to 
the  graces  of  their  Christian  rivals  the  judgment  once  formu- 
lated on  the  virtues  of  the  heathen,  and  to  look  coldly  and 
with  dark  suspicion  on  the  signs  of  a  noble  and  faithful  life 
outside  their  own  pale.  That  is,  they  are  tempted  to  think 
of  themselves,  and  not  of  their  Master  ;  of  the  credit  of  their 
creeds,  and  not  of  the  Saviour. 

I  suppose  that  one  of  the  chief  curses  of  Christendom 
in  all  ages  has  been  man's  limitation  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  The  Saviour  saw  it.  "  Nevertheless,  when  the 
Son  of  Man  cometh,  will  he  find  faith  in  the  earth," — 
faith  in  him  and  in  his  kingdom,  and  not  in  the  parodies  of 
it  which  man  may  set  up  in  its  stead,  to  mock  the  longing 
hope  of  mankind.  One  of  the  best  and  most  hopeful  feat- 
ures of  the  times  in  which  we  live  is  the  measure  in  which 
this  perception  of  Peter's  is  spreading  among  Christians. 
The  churches  are  keen  for  their  creeds  still,  and  they  are 
bound  to  be  keen.  I  am  not  here  to-night  because  I  think 
lightly  of  the  doctrinal  belief  which  I  hold  in  God  manifest 
in  the  flesh.  Our  creeds,  if  they  are  worth  anything,  are 
something  more  than  intellectual  beliefs  :  they  are  modes  of 
apprehending  and  realizing  vital  facts,  which  are  deeply 
related  to  the  noble  and  fair  unfolding  of  the  life.  Life 
gathers  its  tone  and  tinge  from  what  it  feeds  on,  and  we  are 
bound  to  contend  strenuously  for  what  we  believe  to  be  the 
truth  of  God  in  the  doctrine  and  discipline  of  the  Christian 
Church.  But  the  churches  are  opening  the  eyes  of  their 
understandings  to  see  that  there  is  one  thing  greater 
than  their  creeds,  a  Christ-like  life,  and  to  recognize  and 
honor  it  wherever  it  may  appear ;  nor  are  they  startled 
and  perplexed,  as  they  once  were,  if  they  find  it  in  a  very 
pure  and  noble  form  quite  outside  their  own  pale.  Two 
things,  I  think,  among  many  others,  are   found  very  hcli)ful 


400  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

to  this  happy  result.  The  first  is  the  tremendous  trial 
throui:;h  which  our  common  Christianity  is  passing.  I  will 
not  call  it  a  deadly  trial,  for  it  is  well  that  we  should  remem- 
ber that  there  is  nothing  in  God's  truth  which  can  die,  or 
even  be  in  danger  of  dying  ;  but  still  the  trial  is  a  searching 
one.  The  second  is  great  Christian  lives,  of  which  a  very 
noble  typical  example  is  that  of  William  Ellery  Channing. 
The  assault  on  Christianity  in  these  days  is  so  determined, 
and  so  aimed  at  that  which  is  most  vital,  that  the  lovers  of 
the  truth  are  drawn  —  I  will  not  say  driven  —  into  closer 
fellowship  by  the  apparent  peril  of  that  which  they  hold 
most  dear. 

The  time  of  danger  and  pressure  always  brings  out  the 
unity  in  communities,  and  shows  the  diversities  in  their  real 
proportion.  "Blood  is  thicker  than  water,"  said  the  Amer- 
ican captain,  when  he  saw  us  hard  pressed  in  China,  and 
gallantly  struck  into  the  fray  on  our  side.  It  was  esteemed 
an  omen  of  doom  in  the  death  struggle  of  the  Jews  that 
their  deadly  peril  inflamed  instead  of  mitigated  their  intes- 
tine hates.  We  are  banded  together,  not  to  defend, —  the 
truth  wants  less  defence  than  we  think, —  but  to  maintain 
the  truth  of  the  gospel ;  and  we  rejoice,  as  we  stand  shoulder 
to  shoulder,  to  find  how  much  in  heart  and  life  we  are  due. 
I  say  the  truth  wants  less  defence  than  we  think.  We  are 
not  God's  advocates,  we  are  his  witnesses.  Speak  the  truth, 
live  the  truth,  and  cease  your  fancies.  It  will  defend  and 
advocate  itself.  But  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  assault 
which  is  now  directed  on  the  very  foundations  of  the  faith 
tends  to  band  believers  together  in  loving  and  holy  fellow- 
ship. And  it  is  not  only  the  essentials  of  Christianity 
which  are  assailed :  it  is  the  essentials  of  humanity ;  the 
presence  of  a  spirit  in  man,  as  well  as  the  presence  of  a  God 
in  nature, —  a  Being  with  whom  man  can  hold  living  com- 
munion, whose  thoughts   he  can  think  out   after  him,  and 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  4OI 

whose  presence  will  be  the  bliss  of  his  heaven.  And  here  I 
am  thankful  to  be  able  to  acknowledge  publicly,  on  behalf 
of  a  great  company,  the  deep  debt  of  gratitude  which 
we  owe  to  your  distinguished  scholar  and  preacher,  Dr. 
Martineau,  for  his  noble  and  conclusive  vindications  of  the 
reality  of  the  spiritual  sphere,  without  whose  experiences, 
aspirations,  and  hopes,  men  would  find,  in  the  long  run, 
that  life  was  not  worth  the  living  ;  and  when  suicide  would 
again  rise  to  the  dignity  of  an  art,  as  it  did  in  the  days  of 
imperial  Rome.  I  think  that  some  effectual  part  of  Dr. 
Channing's  mantle  rests  on  Dr.  Martineau.  The  essential 
dignity  of  man  was  the  key-note  of  the  deepest  passages  of 
his  writings, —  the  dignity  of  man  and  the  love  of  God, 
which  is  an  essential  part  of  that  dignity  ;  and  it  is  precisely 
the  spiritual  dignity  of  man  which  Dr.  Martineau  has  upheld 
with  such  convincing  power  against  the  philosophy,  falsely 
so  called,  which  would  degrade  it,  and  set  it  in  the  dust. 
The  wisest  Christian  teacher  whom  I  have  ever  known,  the 
late  A.  J.  Scott,  of  Manchester,  said  some  thirty  years  ago, 
"  A  theology  that  shuts  out  human  interests  is  teaching  men 
a  humanity  that  shuts  out  God  and  Christ."  It  was  a 
remarkable  forecast  of  what  we  see  around  us  now.  In  the 
last  generation,  the  dominant  theology  deliberately  expelled 
the  larger  human  interests  from  its  sphere,  and  preached  a 
kingdom  of  heaven  whose  principles  and  methods  of  adminis- 
tration, when  brought  out  into  the  sunlight,  simply  revolted 
the  heart  and  conscience  of  mankind.  The  present  genera- 
tion is  striving  strenuously  to  exclude  God  and  Christ  from 
the  human  sphere,  and  is  bent  on  trying  the  experiment 
whether  man's  life,  and  the  larger  interests  and  activities  of 
human  society,  cannot  be  made  to  flourish  without  any  re- 
ligion at  all.  That  is  the  question  which  the  assize  of  the 
"ermine-robed  great  world"  is  trying  now.  We  may  look 
on  the  progress  of  the  experiment,  not  with  composure  ex- 

27 


402  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

actly. —  the  disturbance  of  sacred  beliefs  is  too  serious,  the 
agony  of  doubt  and  mental  conflict  into  which  earnest  minds 
and  the  young  generation  at  large  are  plunged  is  too  sad 
for  such  composure, —  but  certainly  we  may  regard  it  with- 
out a  shadow  of  alarm.  Human  life  and  Christian  society 
need  Christ,  just  as  the  earth  needs  the  sun  ;  and,  when 
men  have  satisfied  themselves  by  experiment, —  they  must 
satisfy  themselves, —  they  will  not  take  any  account  of  it. 
The  theologians  for  a  time  have  lost  (and  I  fear  righteously 
lost)  the  confidence  of  the  great  world, —  I  say,  when  they 
have  learned  by  experiment  in  what  debased  and  distorted 
forms  the  fair  flowers  and  fruits  of  life  unfold  themselves 
in  the  cold,  dark  shade  of  atheism,  they  will  be  the  first  to 
bring  them  out  into  the  living  sunlight  once  more.  But  this 
is  the  religious  problem  of  our  times, —  the  reconciliation 
of  humanity  with  the  theology  of  the  Church ;  and  there  will 
be  much  sore  pain  and  bitter  strife  before  it  is  solved.  Now, 
I  reckon  it  the  chief  distinction  of  William  Ellery  Chan- 
ning  that  he  was  one  of  the  first  to  see  with  clear  eye  the 
disastrous  tendencies  of  the  dominant  theology,  and  cer- 
tainly one  of  the  first  to  contend  against  it  with  passionate 
earnestness,  which  made  him  a  kind  of  prophet  in  his  times. 
His  inmost  soul  revolted  —  and  I  touch  here  the  centre  of 
his  theological  system,  in  the  space  at  my  command  I  can 
deal  only  with  central  points  —  against  that  interior  schism 
in  the  divine  nature  which  the  popular  language  of  the  dom- 
inant Evangelical  school  seemed  to  imply.  The  Son,  repre- 
senting mercy,  acting  on  the  Father,  representing  justice, 
by  means  of  an  infinite  sacrifice  of  pain,  and  moving  him 
by  the  compensation  of  a  costly  atonement  to  let  his  mercy 
•  lighten  on  the  world, —  that  interior  schism,  which  the  fun- 
damental tenets  of  Calvinism  seem  to  me  to  imply,  pre- 
sented to  the  world  such  a  conception  of  the  divine  nature 
and  ways  as  rendered  Unitarianism  inevitable  as  a  protest ; 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  4O3 

and  there,  you  will  forgive  me  for  saying,  though  you  will 
not  agree  with  me,  I  believe  that  its  function  ends.  But 
thus  far  it  was  needed  ;  and  Channing  gave  voice  to  that 
protest  with  a  fire,  a  depth  of  conviction,  a  persuasive  elo- 
quence, and,  I  will  add,  with  an  Evangelical  fervor,  which  to 
me  is  Channing's  chief  charm  among  many  noble  and  con- 
spicuous qualities,  which  were  unmatched  in  his  generation, 
and  almost  in  our  own.  One  thing  he  saw  with  marvellous 
clearness, —  and  it  is  about  the  finest  thing  in  the  universe 
to  see, —  the  unity  of  the  divine  counsel,  the  divine  thought, 
the  divine  love  in  the  work  of  human  redemption.  From 
first  to  last,  it  was  in  his  sight  the  blessed  and  glorious  work 
of  the  divine  Son.  I  should  say  that  the  key-thought  of  his 
theology  was  this  deep  sentence  of  St.  Paul,  "God  was  in 
Christ,  reconciling  the  world  unto  himself,"  not  Christ  rec- 
onciling God  to  the  world,  but  God  in  Christ,  originating, 
carrying  on,  and  completing  the  work  of  the  redemption  of 
mankind. 

I  should  say  that  few  Evangelical  preachers  have  felt  so 
deeply,  certainly  few  have  experienced  so  powerfully,  the 
wealth  of  the  attractive,  regenerating,  sanctifying  power 
which  the  Son  of  God,  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord, 
supplied  to  the  world.  Here  is  the  human  as  well  as  the 
divine  gospel, —  a  gospel  which  will  bear  the  full  sunlight  of 
man's  reason,  and  will  only  reveal  new  depths  of  wisdom  as 
well  as  love  to  explore.  And  if  ever  there  is  to  be  a  recon- 
ciliation of  the  creeds  of  Christendom,  if  ever  Trinitarian 
and  Unitarian  are  to  be  gathered  in  the  bosom  of  one 
Church,  it  must  be  on  the  basis  of  the  Unity  of  Father, 
Son,  and  Spirit  in  the  redemption,  the  restoration,  and  the 
rule  of  the  great  human  world.  This  gospel  Channing  pro- 
claimed with  a  freshness  and  a  convincing  power  which  had 
their  springs  partly  in  the  singular  strength  of  his  intel- 
lectual conviction,  but  mainly  in  the  fervor  of  his  spiritual 


404  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

life.  Ho  spoke  with  the  force  and  certainty  of  a  prophet, 
and  men  listened  to  him  as  to  one  who  was  inspired.  Chan- 
ning  saw  full  clearly  that,  if  Christianity  was  the  universal 
religion  for  man  in  all  states,  in  all  places,  and  for  all  time,  it 
must  include  the  whole  field  of  man's  legitimate  interests  and 
activities  within  its  sphere.  There  was  no  human  interest, 
there  was  nothing  which  promised  any  measure  of  benedic- 
tion to  mankind,  which  he  did  not  connect  by  natural  necessity 
with  the  gospel.  It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  he  was  about 
the  most  eminent  philanthropist  of  his  tim.e, —  a  leader  and  an 
early  leader,  in  all  those  great  movements  which  have  added 
so  much  to  the  dignity  of  life  and  the  happiness  of  mankind. 
About  slavery,  about  drunkenness,  about  war,  about  educa- 
tion, about  contact  with  the  ministry  to  the  poor,  you  vv^ill 
find  him  early  in  the  century  forecasting  the  line  of  Chris- 
tian and  social  progress,  which,  at  the  end  of  the  century, 
we  are  following  still  with  a  rich  harvest  of  blessing.  He 
had  to  struggle  hard,  and  at  the  cost  of  much  personal  suf- 
fering, to  work  into  the  mind  and  heart  of  Christians  ideas 
and  habits  of  action  on  social  matters  which  are  now  the 
familiar  things  of  Christian  wisdom  and  the  daily  paths  of 
Christian  love.  He  had  wonderful  insight,  too,  into  the 
position  and  mission  of  England.  And  I  think  that  one  of 
the  noblest  passages  in  his  writings  is  that  in  which  he 
traces  the  service  which  England  had  rendered  to  humanity 
in  her  long,  stern  struggle  with  Napoleon,  and  deprecates 
and  censures  the  newly  declared  war.  Many  a  noble  pas- 
sage, too,  do  his  works  contain  on  that  course  of  public 
policy  which  maintains  the  strength  and  dignity  of  nations, 
that  course  from  which  we  Englishmen  have  sadly  wandered, 
but  to  which,  thank  God,  we  have  now  with  full  intelligence 
and  steadfast  purpose  returned.  All  this  I  might  say,  and 
support  by  manifold  and  striking  extracts  ;  but  I  made  up 
my  mind  that  there  would  be  no  space  for  extracts  without 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  405 

infringing  on  time  which  will  be  employed  to  high  purpose 
by  others.  So  I  must  beg  you  to  believe,  what  no  doubt 
many  of  you  know  perfectly  well,  that  all  which  I  advance 
I  could  support  by  ample  quotations,  if  I  had  time.  But  it 
is  not  enough  to  say  this  :  it  is  only  a  part,  and,  I  venture 
to  think,  the  least  part,  of  the  truth.  All  his  philanthropic 
work  was  the  fruit  of  most  sacred  religious  conviction.  He 
was  philanthropist  and  reformer,  because  he  was  a  Christian 
in  days  when  such  Christians  were  few  ;  and  this  threw  into 
his  advocacy  of  these  great  measures  of  mercy  and  progress 
(the  task  of  dilating  on  which  is  committed  to  other  and 
more  competent  hands)  a  constraining  and  convincing  power 
such  as  religious  belief  alone  lends  to  the  argument  of 
progress.  He  threw  himself  with  characteristic  ardor  into 
every  movement  which  promised  to  forward  the  secular  im- 
provement of  men  and  things  around  him,  because  he  found 
in  it  his  gospel, — just  as  in  an  earlier  age  the  "yea,  yea," 
and  "nay,  nay,"  of  George  Fo.x  and  his  Quakers,  in  all  their 
commercial  transactions,  first  established  the  all-important 
commercial  principle  of  fixed  price  in  retail  trade.  The 
book  has  yet  to  be  written  which  shall  show  what  society 
owes  to  religion  in  quickening  and  cherishing  through  their 
infancy  the  germs  of  all  its  most  important  reformers. 

Another  of  the  key-thoughts  of  Channing's  religious  sys- 
tem was  the  essential  dignity  of  our  human  nature,  which 
had  been  systematically  vilified  —  I  can  use  no  other  words 
—  by  the  dominant  theological  school.  I  have  read  in  the- 
ological works  of  high  repute  statements  about  our  human 
nature  which  equally  dishonored  the  wisdom  which  created 
it  and  stultified  the  love  which  redeemed  it.  To  Channing's 
eye,  our  nature,  fallen,  discrowned,  dishevelled  as  it  is,  still 
bore  sacred  marks  of  the  touch  of  the  divine  finger,  and  was 
not  dignified  only,  but  glorified  by  the  incarnation.  Some 
of  the  very  finest  passages  in  his  writings  have   for  their 


406  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

text.  I  here  c]iu^te  his  own  words,  "human  nature  glorified 
in  jcsus."  In  truth,  those  large,  spiritual,  and  most  Chris- 
tian ideas  about  man  and  God  which  the  old  Broad-Church 
party,  of  which  the  ever  beloved  and  honored  Frederic 
Denison  Maurice  was  the  founder,  may  be  found  writ  large 
early  in  the  century  in  Channing's  discourses,  while  at  the 
same  time  —  and  I  believe  that  every  great  leader  of  a  last- 
ing progress  combines  two  great  streams  of  tendency — he 
combined  with  it  the  passionate  fervor,  the  intense  personal 
piety,  the  burning  love  to  Christ,  which  finds  utterance  in 
Wesley's,  Newton's,  and  Toplady's  hymns,  and  which  charac- 
terized the  most  Evangelical  of  the  Evangelical  school. 

And  this  leads  me  on,  in  closing,  to  the  noblest  and  the 
deepest  source  of  Channing's  influence  on  mankind, —  his 
life.  There  is  much  in  his  books,  as  we  have  seen,  to  ac- 
count for  his  influence,  though  there  is  in  his  style  a  fertility 
of  words  and  a  reiteration  of  thoughts  which  is  just  a  little 
wearisome  to  us  in  these  days.  But  then  we  must  remind 
ourselves  that  this  new  literature  in  his  days  was  young  ;  and 
young  things  are  endowed  with  a  copiousness  and  facility 
which  are  not  without  their  uses,  and  which  mature  into 
felicity  in  time.  And,  further,  these  great  themes  which 
occupied  his  pen,  familiar  now  to  us  as  daily  bread  and  sun- 
light, had  to  be  pressed  by  constant  reiteration,  "  line  upon 
line  and  precept  upon  precept,"  on  the  heart  and  conscience 
of  mankind.  Still,  there  is  a  want  in  his  style,  though  it  is 
powerful  and  eloquent,  of  the  subtle,  opalescent  charm,  that 
aif/ind/iov yi/iaa/ia  which  iEschylus  saw  in  the  ocean,  and  which 
plays  over  the  pages  of  the  great  scholarly  master  of  style  in 
the  literature  of  the  world.  But,  then,  there  was  something 
larger  and  deeper  than  charm.  There  was  a  force  there 
which  mastered  and  compelled  men.  There  was  electric  fire 
that  set  them  in  vital  movement ;  there  was  the  ring  of  in- 
tense personal  conviction  ;  there  was  the  expression  which 
none  could  miss,  of  a  great,  noble,  self-sacrificing  life. 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  4O7 

And  here  I  touch  the  chief  point  of  all,  and  with  this 
I  close.  A  man's  worth  to  the  world,  after  all,  depends 
on  what  he  is,  and  not  on  what  he  says,  or  even  what 
he  does.  The  Life  was  the  light  of  men,  is  the  light  of 
men,  and  will  be  to  the  end  of  time.  What  Channing  was 
as  a  preacher  and  leader  of  progress  is  a  great  thing :  the 
greatest  was  what  he  was  in  his  own  soul.  If  you  want  to 
know  what  he  was  as  a  preacher,  you  must  not  only  sit  with 
the  throng  which  gathered  to  hear  his  burning  words,  which 
hung  upon  his  lips  and  listened  breathless  while  Christ's 
ambassador  pleaded  as  with  Christ's  own  earnestness  with 
human  souls  :  you  must  follow  him  to  his  study;  you  must 
read  his  diary  ;  you  must  catch  the  outbreathing  of  his  in- 
most spirit  to  his  Master ;  you  must  watch  him  breathing 
importunate  prayer  for  the  souls  of  men.  I  know  not  any- 
thing within  the  whole  compass  of  theological  literature 
more  calculated  than  Dr.  Channing's  diary  to  impress  young 
preachers  with  a  solemn,  almost  an  awful  sense  of  the 
sacredness  of  their  vocation,  and  to  cast  them  on  the  Mas- 
ter's grace  in  fulfilling  it.  "  One  thing  I  do,"  he  could  say, 
if  ever  man  could  say  it,  with  an  honest  heart.  And  men 
observed  him  as  a  man  whose  whole  being  was  consecrated 
to  what  he  believed  to  be  the  greatest  of  missions,  and  who, 
if  he  preached  Christianity  fervently  from  his  pulpit,  would 
have  preached  Christ  as  fervently  from  the  rack  and  the 
stake,  and  would  have  gloried,  like  Paul,  in  being  counted 
worthy  to  suffer  loss  and  even  death  for  his  name.  And 
beneath  all  this,  the  basis  of  it  all,  its  strong,  unfailing  sup- 
port, was  his  inner  fidelity,  simplicity,  and  piety  as  a  man. 
He  lived  to  God.  God  was  in  all  his  thoughts.  Truly  his 
fellowship  was  with  the  Father,  and  with  the  son  Jesus 
Christ.  He  felt,  as  few  men  have  ever  felt,  the  attraction  of 
his  Master's  example,  the  inspiration  of  his  Master's  jDur- 
pose,  the  constraining  power  of  his  Master's  love.     "The 


408  CHANNING    CKNTENARV. 

lovo  of  Clirist  constraineth  me,"  c.\i)ressed  the  inner  secret 
of  his  life.  v\ncl  because  he  lived  a  Christian  of  a  very 
noble  and  lofty  tyi:)e  in  the  deep  recesses  of  his  own  spirit, 
always  aspiring  after  the  divine  likeness  and  seeking  ever 
fuller  and  yet  fuller  satisfaction  in  the  contemplation  of  the 
divine  perfectness  and  the  communings  of  the  divine  love, 
he  was  able  to  be  as  a  beacon-light  in  his  generation  to  a 
great  multitude,  not  in  his  own  country  only,  but  through- 
out the  world.  It  was  given  to  him  to  work  out  for  his  own 
generation  the  path  of  a  noble,  lasting,  and  fruitful  progress ; 
and  now  that  he  is  gone,  "being  dead,  he  yet  speaketh," 
He  is  speaking  here  to-night, —  yes,  and  the  light  of  his  life 
still  flashes  on  far  before  us,  and  marks  the  line  for  our 
advancing  steps.  For  himself,  he  has  heard  the  word  of  the 
Master,  "Go  thou  thy  way  until  the  end  be:  thou  shalt  rest, 
and  shalt  stand  in  thy  lot  in  the  end  of  the  days."  And 
then  few,  I  think,  among  earth's  great  ones,  will  be  crowned 
with  more  illustrious  honor  in  the  day  "  when  the  teachers 
shall  shine  as  the  brightness  of  the  firmament,  and  those 
that  turn  many  to  righteousness  as  the  stars  for  ever  and 
ever." 

ADDRESS  OF  ME.  THOMAS  HUGHES,  Q.C. 

Mr.  Chairman  and  Friends, —  The  paper  which  I  have 
been  asked  to  read  is  entirely  upon  Channing  as  the  anti- 
slavery  prophet.  I  feel  it  to  be  an  honor  to  be  allowed  to 
take  part  in  this  festival,  and  to  speak  of  Dr.  Channing  as 
one  of  that  band  of  men  and  women  who,  fifty  years  ago, 
made  the  cause  of  the  slave  their  own  in  the  United  States, 
and  in  the  face  of  rebuke  and  discouragement  from  society 
and  the  churches,  and  of  danger  to  life  and  property  from 
the  mob,  persevered,  through  evil  report  and  good  report, 
until  the  victory  was  achieved,  and  the  flag  of  the  Great 
Republic,  like  our  own,  waved  over  none  but  freemen.     I  do 


1 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  4O9 

not  know  how  far  you  who  are  gathered  here  to-day  in  mem- 
ory of  a  great  and  good  man  may  agree  with  me ;  but  to  me 
it  has  long  seemed  that  to  that  band  belongs  the  highest 
place  as  benefactors  of  our  race  in  this  strange  and  eventful 
century, —  that  the  seeker  for  heroic  and  Christian  lives,  for 
the  simplest,  the  truest,  the  bravest  followers  of  the  Son  of 
Man,  will  have  to  turn  to  the  abolitionists  of  New  England. 
I  do  not  forget  —  I  am  proud  always  to  remember  —  that 
Old  England  led  the  way,  and  that  the  struggle  here,  too, 
was  one  which  tried  men's  hearts  and  reins.  But  honor 
to  whom  honor  is  due ;  and  if  we  will  try  to  think  what  our 
anti-slavery  movement  would  have  been,  had  our  eight 
hundred  thousand  slaves  been  scattered  over  the  southern 
counties  of  England  instead  of  over  islands  thousands  of 
miles  away,  and  had  belonged  by  law  to  the  noblemen  and 
squires  in  those  counties  more  strictly  than  their  rabbits  and 
hares  belong  to  them,  we  shall  have  little  hesitation,  I  think, 
in  yielding  freely  the  foremost  place  to  the  group  of  New 
Englanders  among  whom  Channing  stood  out  a  noteworthy 
figure, —  in  some  respects,  undoubtedly,  the  most  note- 
worthy of  all.     Yes,  as  Mr.  Lowell  sings  :  — 

"  All  honor  and  praise  to  the  women  and  men 
Who  spake  out  for  the  dumb  and  the  down-trodden  then ! 
I  need  not  to  name  them.     Already  for  each 
I  see  History  preparing  the  stake  and  the  niche. 
They  were  harsh ;  but  shall  you  be  so  shocked  at  hard  words, 
Who  have  beaten  your  pruning-hooks  up  into  swords  ? 
Your  calling  them  cut-throats  and  knaves  all  day  long 
Don't  prove  that  the  use  of  hard  language  is  wrong. 
You  needn't  look  shy  at  your  sisters  and  brothers 
Who  stabbed  with  sharp  words  for  the  freedom  of  others. 
No  :  a  wreath,  twine  a  wreath,  for  the  loyal  and  true 
Who,  for  sake  of  the  many,  dared  stand  with  the  few, — 
Not  of  blood-spattered  laurel  for  the  enemies  braved, 
But  of  broad,  peaceful  oak-leaves  for  citizens  saved  I  " 

This  defence  which  he  who  was  to  become   one  of  their 


^lO  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

most  powerful  voices  hero  fiiuls  himself  driven  to  rnnke  for 
the  abolitionists,  was  never  needed  for  Channing ;  and  it  is 
for  this  reason  that  I  have  referred  to  him  as  perhaps  the 
most  noteworthy  of  them  all.  For  in  all  the  excitement  of 
a  controversy  which  he  felt  to  be  for  the  life  itself,  and  to  be 
going  down  to  the  roots  of  things  ;  when  the  religious  and 
respectable  world  shrank  from  the  side  of  the  teacher  they 
had  pretended  to  love  and  honor  for  thirty  years ;  when  the 
finger  of  hatred  and  scorn  was  pointed  at  him  in  an  all  but 
unanimous  press,  as  the  fomenter  of  revolution  and  the 
associate  of  felons  and  fanatics, —  no  word  ever  fell  from  his 
lips  or  pen  which  was  not  weighted  with  consideration  for 
and  sympathy  with  his  enemies,  and  generous  allowance  for 
the  difificulties  of  the  Southern  slave- owner.  In  his  first 
great  anti-slavery  manifesto,  his  Letter  to  H.  Clay  on  the 
Annexation  of  Texas,  he  speaks  of  his  own  early  residence 
in  the  South,  and  his  life-long  attachment  to  them.  "There 
is  something  singularly  captivating  in  the  unbounded  hospi- 
tality, the  impulsive  generosity,  the  carelessness  for  the 
future,  the  frank,  open  manners,  the  buoyant  spirit  and 
courage,  which  marks  the  people  " ;  and  from  this  he  never 
swerved  in  later  years,  when  the  contest  had  become  en- 
venomed. "  Hitherto,  the  Christian  world  has  made  very 
little  progress  in  assailing  and  overcoming  evil,"  was  one  of 
his  sayings  ;  and  it  w^as  with  scrupulous  care  that  he  strove 
to  set  some  example  of  the  divine  method  in  the  great  con- 
troversy of  his  own  time. 

Let  me  now,  as  briefly  as  possible,  recall  the  position 
of  the  question  of  1830.  The  struggle  in  England  was 
drawing  to  an  end.  Those  of  you  who  are  old  enough  will 
recollect  those  days,  when  children  were  brought  up  to  use 
no  sugar,  and  to  give  every  penny  they  could  call  their  own 
for  the  cause  of  the  slave.  How  the  time  was  one  of  bright 
hope  and  enthusiastic  work,  for  the  goal  was  full  in  view ! 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  4I  I 

On  the  1st  of  August,  1834,  the  Act  passed,  and  emancipa- 
tion was  a  fact.  In  the  United  States,  it  was  far  otherwise. 
There,  year  by  year,  the  prospect  was  growing  darker,  and 
the  clouds  were  gathering.  The  Southern  tone  had  changed 
under  the  strain  of  the  immense  development  of  the  cotton 
trade.  Instead  of  lamenting  slavery  as  an  evil  inheritance 
from  their  fathers,  which  was  to  be  curtailed  by  every 
prudent  method,  and  finally  extinguished,  Calhoun  and  the 
Southern  leaders  were  now  openly  proclaiming  it  to  be  the 
true  condition  of  the  laborer  and  the  mainstay  of  society. 
They  were  looking  round  eagerly  for  new  slave  States,  to 
balance  the  steady  increase  of  free  States  in  the  North,  and 
by  savage  word  and  savage  act  were  challenging  and  trying 
to  stamp  out  every  attempt  to  interfere  with  their  domestic 
institution.  Their  challenge  had  been  formally  accepted, 
and  the  gage  of  battle  taken  up  in  these  very  months.  It 
was  in  this  winter  of  1830-31  that  Garrison,  the  immortal 
journeyman  printer,  by  extraordinary  energy,  got  out  the 
first  number  of  the  Liberator,  declaring  slavery  to  be  a 
"league  with  death  and  covenant  with  hell,"  and  pledging 
himself  and  his  friends  to  war  with  it  to  the  bitter  end. 
Their  watchword  was  uncompromising,  immediate  emancipa- 
tion. It  was  in  this  same  winter  that  Channing  went  to  spend 
some  months  at  St.  Croix.  He  had  not  been  in  a  slave  State 
since  his  boyhood,  and  he  returned  with  all  his  old  impres- 
sions confirmed  and  strengthened.  Slavery  he  felt  to  be  even 
a  greater  curse  to  the  world  than  he  had  always  proclaimed 
it.  So  he  preached  on  his  return  to  New  England,  and  at 
the  same  time  showed  much  interest  in  the  work  of  Garri- 
son, and  the  uncompromising  party,  pleading  for  them  that 
"deeply  moved  souls  will  speak  strongly,  sought  to  speak 
so  as  to  move  and  shake  nations."  No  wonder  that  they 
turned  eagerly  to  him  in  the  hope  that  he  would  join  them 
openly   and    lead  their   attack.     But  for  the   moment   this 


412  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

coulil  not  be:  the  temper  of  the  combatants,  waxinj;  fiercer 
ilay  by  clay,  was  a  barrier  wbich  be  could  not  cross  as  yet  ; 
and  no  doubt  the  social  ostracism — so  formidable  to  one 
who  has  for  a  generation  stood  foremost — among  those 
whom  his  countrymen  delighted  to  honor  weighed  somewhat 
with  him.  He  could  defend  the  abolitionists  as  "  men 
moved  by  a  passionate  devotion  to  truth  and  freedom," 
which  led  them  to  speak  "with  an  indignant  energy  which 
ought  not  to  be  measured  by  the  standard  of  ordinary  times," 
but  join  them  at  once  he  could  not.  And  they,  in  their 
disappointment,  were  almost  ready  to  denounce  him  as  one 
of  those  recreants  who  are  addressed  in  the  first  stirring 
appeal  in  the  Biglow  Papers :  — 

"  Wall,  go  along  to  help  'em  stealin' 
Bigger  pens  to  cram  with  slaves ; 
Help  the  men  that's  oilers  dealin' 
Insults  on  your  fathers'  graves ; 

"  Help  the  strong  to  grind  the  feeble ; 
Help  the  many  agin  the  few ; 
Help  the  men  that  call  your  people 

Whitewashed  slaves  and  peddlin'  crew. 

"  Hain't  they  sold  your  colored  seamen } 
Hain't  they  made  your  envj-s  wiz  .■' 
Wut'U  make  ye  act  like  freemen? 
Wut'll  get  your  dander  riz.'"' 

The  question  whether  Channing  would  have  done  well 
to  join  the  abolitionists  at  once  will  always  remain  fairly 
debatable,  and  will  be  settled  by  each  of  us  according  to  the 
strength  of  his  own  fighting  instinct.  Those  who  blame 
him  for  delaying  can  at  any  rate  call  himself  as  a  witness  on 
their  side.  When  at  the  end  of  1834  the  Rev.  Samuel  May, 
General  Agent  of  the  Boston  Anti-slavery  Society,  in  answer 
to  Channing's  expostulations  as  to  the  harshness  and  vio- 
lence of  their  language,  and  the  heat  and  one-sidedness  of 
the  abolitionist    meetings,   turned  upon   him   with :   "  Why, 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  413 

then,  have  you  left  the  movement  in  young  and  inexperi- 
enced hands  ?  Why,  sir,  have  you  not  moved,  why  have 
you  not  spoken  before?"  Channing,  after  a  pause,  replied 
in  his  kindest  tones:  "Brother  May,  I  acknowledge  the  jus- 
tice of  the  reproof.  I  have  been  silent  too  long."  Looking, 
however,  at  the  man's  age  and  character,  I  cannot  myself 
join  in  casting  blame  on  Channing.  Other  men  might  have 
deserved  reproach  for  not  emphasizing  their  convictions  in 
this  way,  but  not  he.  At  school,  he  had  gained  the  name  of 
the  Peacemaker.  He  had  been  true  to  that  character  for 
half  a  century.  While  a  gleam  of  hope  remained  that  the 
South  might  even  yet  move  in  the  direction  of  abolition,  a 
gentle  firmness  of  remonstrance  was  the  only  weapon  he 
could  conscientiously  sanction.  And  there  was  still  such  a 
gleam  of  hope  in  the  lurid  clouds.  As  late  as  1832,  the 
question  of  abolition  had  been  discussed  in  the  Virginian 
legislature.  Some  few  of  the  best  Southern  public  men 
still  held  the  old  doctrine,  and  were  ready  to  work  for 
gradual  emancipation.  They  were  even  doing  so  by  a  coloni- 
zation society,  and  other  stop-gaps,  the  hollowness  and  worth- 
lessness  of  which  had  not  yet  been  proved.  The  peacemaker 
might  still  prevail.  But  now  the  time  had  indeed  come 
when  farther  hesitation  would  have  left  a  stain  on  his  armor. 
I  have  said  that  the  South  were  on  the  lookout  for  new 
territories  into  which  to  carry  their  slaves,  and  the  devil 
rarely  fails  to  find  what  they  are  in  search  of  for  men  in  that 
frame  of  mind.  We  must  once  more  go  back  for  a  few 
years.  In  1827,  the  Spanish  American  Colonies  had  gained 
their  independence.  Mexico,  the  chief  of  them,  and  the 
nearest  neighbor  to  the  United  States,  had  from  the  first 
looked  up  to  the  Republic  with  hope  and  admiration.  But 
from  her  great  elder  sister  no  response  came.  Her  good- 
will was  coldly  put  aside,  for  she  had  declared  freedom  to  all 
slaves  in  her  borders ;  and  these  borders,  unhappily  for  her, 


414  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

comprised  a  magnificent  territory  called  Texas,  as  large  as 
any  four  States  of  the  Union,  and  eminently  fitted  for  cotton- 
growing,  and  therefore  for  slave-labor.  The  temptation  of 
this  Naboth's  vineyard  soon  proved  too  strong  for  the  slave- 
holders, and  an  immigration  of  planters  and  slaves  set  in. 
The  Mexican  Government  remonstrated ;  and  high  words 
ended  in  a  declaration  of  independence  by  the  new  settlers, 
and  fighting,  which  must  soon  have  resulted  in  their  defeat  — 
for  they  scarcely  amounted  to  twenty  thousand  in  all  —  but 
for  the  constant  replenishment  of  their  ranks  by  bands  of 
filibusters  from  the  other  side  of  the  Mississippi.  By  this 
means,  Texas  maintained  a  precarious  kind  of  independence, 
which  she  was  endeavoring  to  convert  into  annexation  to 
the  Union.  For  some  time,  every  American  statesman 
scouted  so  shameless  a  proposal ;  but,  by  degrees,  the  value 
of  the  country  began  to  impress  the  slave  States  more  and 
more.  Talk  of  "  manifest  destiny "  began  to  be  heard  not 
only  in  the  New  Orleans  Picayune  and  in  border  ruffian 
meetings,  but  within  the  walls  of  Congress,  till  in  1835-36  it 
became  clear  that  annexation,  involving  almost  certain  war 
with  Mexico,  was  about  to  be  submitted  to  the  great  council 
of  the  nation.  Here,  then,  was  a  new  departure,  involving 
on  the  part  of  the  nation  a  sanction  of  slavery  such  as  had 
never  yet  been  tolerated.  Already  Channing  had  begun  to 
redeem  his  pledge.  He  had  published  a  volume  on  Slavery, 
taking  firm  ground  against  the  furious  madness  of  the 
Southerners,  who  were  calling  for  the  suppression  of  anti- 
slavery  publications,  and  setting  prices  on  the  heads  of  lead- 
ing abolitionists  ;  and  against  the  more  odious  respectable 
Northern  mobs,  which  even  in  Boston  had  broken  up 
meetings,  and  had  dragged  Garrison  through  the  streets 
with  a  halter  round  his  neck,  intent  on  hanging  him. 
Channing  had  also  opened  his  pulpit  to  May,  the  general 
agent  of   the  anti-slavery  societies.     Now,  he  stepped  for- 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  415 

ward  as  a  leader,  and  stood  frankly  side  by  side  with  the 
abolitionists.  Selecting  for  his  correspondent  Henry  Clay, 
of  Kentucky,  the  best  and  most  moderate  of  Southern  poli- 
ticians, he  addressed  to  him  the  most  famous  of  his  political 
writings, —  the  Letter  on  the  Annexation  of  Texas.  I  have 
already  quoted  from  this  one  of  many  passages  which  show 
his  friendly  temper  toward  the  Southern  slave-holders  ;  but 
the  most  thorough-going  abolitionist  could  take  no  excep- 
tion to  the  firmness  of  the  position  taken  or  the  power  with 
which  it  was  held.  Time  will  only  allow  me  to  give  the 
briefest  outline  of  this  masterly  paper.  Congress,  Chan- 
ning  said,  is  about  to  be  called  on  to  decide  whether  Texas 
shall  be  annexed  to  the  Union.  Public  questions  have  not 
been  those  on  which  my  work  has  been  spent.  But  no  one 
speaks,  the  danger  presses,  and  I  cannot  be  silent.  There 
are  crimes  which  in  their  magnitude  have  a  touch  of  the 
sublime,  and  this  will  be  one  of  them.  The  current  ex- 
cesses only  make  it  more  odious.  The  annexationists  talk 
of  their  zeal  for  freedom  !  What  they  really  mean  is  their 
passion  for  unrighteous  spoil.  Of  manifest  destiny  !  Away 
with  such  vile  sophistry !  There  can  be  no  necessity  for 
crime.  Mexico  came  to  us  seven  years  ago,  a  sister  repub- 
lic, just  escaped  from  the  yoke  of  a  European  tyranny,  look- 
ing to  us  hopefully  for  good-will  and  sympathy.  Instead  of 
these,  in  our  unholy  greed,  we  have  sent  them  land  specula- 
tors and  ruffians,  who  are  waging  war  against  a  nation  to 
which  we  owed  protection  against  such  assaults.  Is  the 
time  never  to  come  when  the  neighborhood  of  a  more  pow- 
erful and  civilized  people  will  prove  a  blessing  and  not  a 
curse  to  an  inferior  community  ?  But  the  crime  is  aggra- 
vated by  the  real  cause  of  it, —  the  extension  and  perpetua- 
tion of  the  slave-trade.  What  will  other  nations — what, 
especially,  will  England  —  say  to  it  .'*  We  hope  to  prop  up 
slavery  by  this   filibustering;  but  the  fall  of  slavery  is   as 


4l6  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

sure  as  the  fall  of  your  own  Ohio  to  the  sea.  A  nation  pro- 
voking war  by  cupidity,  by  encroachment,  and,  above  all,  by 
efforts  to  spread  slavery,  is  alike  false  to  itself,  to  God,  and 
to  the  human  race.  You  are  entering  on  a  new  and  fatal 
path.  Let  the  spread  and  perpetuation  of  slavery  be  once 
systematized  and  proposed  as  a  Southern  policy,  and  a  new 
feeling  will  burst  forth  in  the  North.  Let  Texas  be  once 
annexed,  and  there  can  be  no  more  peace  for  us.  We  may 
not  see  the  catastrophe  of  the  tragedy,  the  first  scene  of 
which  we  seem  so  ready  to  enact.  We  who  are  enlarging 
the  borders  of  slavery,  when  all  over  Christendom  there  are 
signs  of  a  growing  elevation  of  the  poor  in  every  other 
country, —  we  are  sinking  below  the  civilization  of  our  day ; 
we  are  inviting  the  scorn,  indignation,  and  abhorrence  of 
the  world.  In  short,  this  proposed  measure  will  exert  a 
disastrous  influence  on  the  moral  sentiments  and  principles 
of  this  country  by  sanctioning  plunder,  by  inflaming  cupid- 
ity, by  encouraging  lawless  speculation,  by  bringing  into  the 
confederacy  a  community  whose  whole  history  and  circum- 
stances are  adverse  to  moral  order  and  wholesome  restraint, 
by  violating  national  faith,  by  proposing  immoral  and  in- 
human ends,  by  placing  us,  as  a  people,  in  opposition  to  the 
efforts  of  philanthropy  and  the  advancing  movements  of 
the  civilized  world.  Freedom  is  fighting  her  battle  in  the 
world  with  long  enough  odds  against  her  already.  Let  us 
not  giv^e  new  chances  to  her  foes. 

I  fear  I  can  have  hardly  succeeded  in  giving  you  even  a 
faint  notion  of  the  power  of  argument  and  beauty  of  style 
of  this  splendid  protest.  Occasions  for  speech  now  crowded 
on  him  thick  and  fast.  In  July,  1836,  a  mob  sacked  the 
office  of  the  PJiilatithropist  at  Cincinnati,  and  drove  Mr. 
Birney,  its  editor,  from  that  city.  Channing  could  not  rest 
till  he  had  written  him  the  noble  letter  (published  in  his 
collected   works    under   the  title  "  The  Abolitionists  "),  ex- 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  417 

horting  him  and  his  friends  to  hold  fast  the  right  of  free 
discussion,  but  to  exercise  it  as  Christians.  "  The  cross  is 
the  badge  and  standard  of  our  religion.  I  honor  all  who 
bear  it.  I  look  with  scorn  on  the  seliish  greatness  of  this 
world,  and  with  pity  upon  the  most  gifted  and  prosperous  in 
the  struggle  for  office  and  power ;  but  I  look  with  reverence 
on  the  obscurest  man  who  suffers  for  the  right,  who  is  true 
to  a  good  but  persecuted  cause."  But  his  complete  identifi- 
cation with  the  abolitionists  did  not  come  till  the  next  year. 
In  November,  1837,  the  office  of  the  Alton  Observer  m.  Illi- 
nois was  attacked,  sacked,  and  its  owner  and  editor,  Lovejoy, 
the  friend  and  fellow-worker  of  Garrison,  killed  while  defend- 
ing his  property.  New  England's  respectability  was  fairly 
startled  at  last.  It  was  resolved  by  gentlemen  of  position, 
who  had  no  dealings  with  abolitionists,  that  a  meeting  must 
be  held  in  Faneuil  Hall,  to  protest  against  this  and  other 
acts  of  murderous  violence,  and  to  maintain  the  threatened 
right  of  free  speech.  A  petition  for  the  use  of  the  hall  was 
prepared.  And  the  first  signature  was  Channing's,  over  those 
of  Sewall,  Sturges,  and  others  of  the  best  blood  in  Boston. 
The  Board  of  Aldermen  refused  the  hall ;  but  the  response 
from  the  whole  Bay  State  to  a  temperate  letter  of  Chan- 
ning's in  the  Daily  Advertiser  soon  convinced  them  that 
they  had  gone  too  far.  The  hall  was  granted,  and  the  meet- 
ing held  on  December  8 ;  and  Channing  proposed  resolutions 
in  favor  of  freedom  of  speech  and  meeting,  prepared  by  him- 
self. When  these  had  been  seconded,  the  Attorney-General 
of  Massachusetts  rose,  and,  in  a  speech  in  which  he  likened 
the  Alton  mob  to  the  fathers  of  the  Revolution,  opposed  the 
resolutions.  The  meeting  wavered ;  and  they  would  proba- 
bly have  been  lost  but  for  the  speech  of  an  unknown  youth, 
who  has  since  proved  himself  the  greatest  of  anti-slavery 
orators,  Mr.  Wendell  Phillips,  The  resolutions  were  carried 
in  the  end  by  acclamation,  and  for  the  moment  the  cause  of 


4l8  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

freedom  triumphed  in  Boston.  But  too  soon  the  clouds 
leathered  a.i;ain,  swiftly  and  ominously  ;  and,  from  that  time 
till  his  death,  in  1S42,  Channing's  soul  was  vexed  and  his 
patience  tried  by  the  blind  fury  and  malignity  with  which 
the  slave-owner's  cause  was  pressed,  and  the  frequent  un- 
wisdom and  needless  provocation  with  which  the  assault  was 
met.  Within  a  few  days  of  the  Faneuil  Hall  meeting,  when 
a  weak  or  vain  man  would  have  been  glorying  in  his  tri- 
umph, he  addressed  a  letter  to  the  Liberator,  calling  on  the 
abolitionists  to  show  their  disapproval  of  Lovejoy's  use  of 
force  at  Alton.  "You  are  a  growing  party,  burning  with 
righteous  zeal,"  he  urged;  "but  you  are  distrusted  and  hated 
by  a  multitude  of  your  fellow-citizens.  Here  are  the  seeds 
of  deadly  strife,  conflicts,  bloodshed.  Show  your  forbear- 
ance now,  that  you  will  not  meet  force  by  force.  Trust  in 
the  laws  and  the  moral  sympathy  of  the  community.  Try 
the  power  of  suffering  for  truth  :  the  first  Christians  tried 
it  among  communities  more  ferocious  than  ours,  and  pre- 
vailed." 

And  now  he  himself  had  to  bear  bitter  humiliation  for  the 
truth's  sake,  such  as  the  refusal  of  the  committee  of  his  own 
church  to  allow  a  service  connected  with  the  death  of  his 
friend  Charles  Follen,  a  leading  abolitionist.  Yet  he  con- 
tinued his  work  faithfully  and  even  hopefully,  speaking  out 
at  every  dangerous  turn  in  the  conflict  which  was  raging 
round  him.  His  chief  remaining  works  in  connection  with 
the  slavery  question  are :  "The  Duty  of  the  Free  States,"  in 
which  he  defends  the  English  Government  for  refusing  to 
surrender  a  slave  cargo  who  had  overpowered  the  officers 
and  crew,  and  had  carried  the  brig  "Creole"  into  Nassau; 
and  "  Emancipation,"  a  tract  on  the  great  triumph  in  the 
West  Indies.  They  are  as  thorough  and  able  as  the  best  of 
his  works,  and  must  be  read  by  all  who  desire  to  know  the 
length  and  breadth  of  the  strength  of  his  charity.     As  Eng- 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  419 

lishmen,  however,  we  may  be  allowed  to  refer  with  special 
pride  to  the  last  public  utterance  of  his  saint-like  life.  In 
the  summer  of  1842,  he  was  dying  slowly  in  the  lovely  Berk- 
shire hills,  when  the  return  of  August  ist,  the  anniversary 
of  emancipation  in  the  West  Indies,  once  more  inspired  him 
to  lift  up  his  voice  for  the  outcast  and  the  oppressed.  To 
the  men  and  women  of  Berkshire,  he  spoke  of  the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  eight  hundred  thousand  British  slaves,  begun 
eight  and  finally  completed  four  years  before.  While  giving 
full  credit  to  the  nation  and  the  men  who  had  been  the  in- 
struments,—  Christian  men  who  had  carried  through  their 
work  against  prejudice,  custom,  interest,  opulence,  pride, 
and  civil  power,  against  the  whole  weight  of  the  commercial 
class  thrown  into  the  other  scale, —  he  repeats  once  more : 
"  Emancipation  was  the  fruit  of  Christian  principle  acting 
on  the  mind  and  heart  of  a  great  people.  The  liberator  of 
the  slaves  was  Jesus  Christ."  And  these  are  the  last  words 
he  ever  spoke  in  public  :  "  The  song  *  On  earth  peace  '  will 
not  always  sound  as  a  fiction.  Oh,  come,  thou  kingdom  of 
God,  for  which  we  daily  pray  !  Come,  Friend  and  Saviour 
of  the  race,  who  didst  shed  thy  blood  on  the  cross  to  recon- 
cile man  to  man  and  earth  to  heaven !  Come,  ye  predicted 
ages  of  righteousness !  Come,  Almipfhty  Father,  and  crown 
with  thine  omnipotence  the  humble  striving  of  thy  children 
to  subvert  oppression  and  wrong,  to  speak  light  and  freedom, 
peace  and  joy,  the  truth  and  spirit  of  thy  Son  through  the 
whole  earth." 

These  were  the  last  words  of  the  great  Christian  leader 
of  the  New  England  abolitionists.  He  died  before  his 
country  had  committed  the  great  wrong  whose  issues  he 
had  so  clearly  seen.  The  war  with  Mexico  was  declared 
in  1848,  Texas  and  California  were  annexed  ;  and,  as  Chan- 
ning  prophesied,  all  hope  of  peace  between  North  and 
South,    while    slavery    survived,    vanished    from    that    hour. 


420  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Then  followed  twelve  feverish  years  of  futile  compromise 
and  smouldcrinij:  civil  war,  the  fugitive  slave  law,  the  free 
soil  crusade  in  Kansas,  the  raid  of  John  Brown  at  Harper's 
Ferry,  culminating  in  secession,  and  the  extinction  of 
slavery  in  the  Union  in  torrents  of  the  best  blood  of  the 
Republic,  poured  out  at  last  like  w^ater,  to  redeem  that 
strange  New  World  as  the  glorious  inheritance  of  all  men, 
without  distinction  of  race,  color,  or  condition.  All  honor 
to  the  brave  and  true  souls  who  led  the  forlorn  hope,  and 
to  him,  the  wisest  and  greatest,  and  not  the  least  firm,  of 
all,  whose  memory  we  are  to-day  to  keep  green  and  fresh 
in  men's  minds  !  In  thinking  of  his  anti-slavery  record, 
does  not  the  lesson  read  somehow  thus  ?  There  are  times 
when  it  would  seem  that  great  causes  in  this  mysterious 
battle-field  of  our  race  can  only  be  upheld  by  an  enthu- 
siasm which  can  see  but  one  side,  backed  by  the  strong 
arm  prompt  to  return  blow  for  blow.  But  such  crises 
can  only  arise  in  human  affairs  from  the  failure  of  true 
insight,  patience,  charity,  at  some  earlier  stage  of  the 
drama.  And,  on  the  whole,  we  shall  best  serve  God's  pur- 
pose by  bearing  steadily  in  mind  that  the  victory  of  the 
Son  of  Man,  which  alone  has  made  any  and  all  victories 
possible  for  his  brethren,  was  won  for  our  race  by  Him  of 
whom  it  is  said  by  the  inspired  seer  :  "He  shall  not  cry, 
nor  lift  up,  nor  cause  his  voice  to  be  heard  in  the  street. 
A  bruised  reed  shall  he  not  break,  and  the  smoking  flax 
shall  he  not  quench  :  he  shall  bring  forth  judgment  unto 
truth.  He  shall  not  fail  nor  be  discouraged,  till  he  have  set 
judgment  in  the  earth  ;  and  the  isles  shall  wait  for  his  law." 

The  Chairman  said  that  Mr.  Sturge  had  been  asked  to 
read  a  paper  on  Channing  as  the  opponent  of  slavery,  but  he 
was  unable  to  be  present  at  the  meeting.  He  had,  however, 
sent  a  long  letter,  portions  of  which  would  now  be  read. 

The  Rev.  H.  Ierson. —  Mr.  Sturge,  after  speaking  of  the 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  421 

great  fight  that  Channing  carried  on  against  slavery  in 
America,  says :  "  I  had  never  the  privilege  of  a  personal 
acquaintance  with  Dr.  Channing;  but,  in  the  year  1840,  my 
late  brother,  Joseph  Sturge,  undertook  a  mission  to  America, 
with  the  main  object  of  attacking  the  apathy  on  this  ques- 
tion, which  then  but  too  largely  pervaded  the  Society  of 
Friends  of  that  country.  In  this,  he  had  the  able  and 
effective  co-operation  of  John  Whittier,  and  the  work  was 
blessed  with  no  little  success  ;  and  it  was  on  his  return  that 
he  gave  descriptions  of  Dr.  Channing  and  the  warfare  that 
he  was  urging  as  to  place  me  almost  as  much  eii  rapport 
with  Dr.  Channing  as  though  I  had  known  him  in  the  flesh. 
Forty  years  have  not  effaced  these  impressions ;  and  they 
impel  me  to  add  my  feeble  testimony  to  that  of  the  gentle- 
men who  meet  to-morrow,  that  the  memory  of  the  just  is 
blessed. 

The  Rev.  Dr.  Martineau. —  I  hold  in  my  hand  a  short 
paper  communicated  by  the  Dean  of  Westminster,  which  he 
requested  me  to  read  to  the  meeting. 

THE  DEAN  OF  WESTMINSTER'S  ADDRESS, 

When  at  Boston  two  years  ago,  I  visited  in  the  beautiful 
cemetery  of  Mount  Auburn,  overlooking  the  river  Charles, 
the  grave  of  William  Channing.  I  saw  on  his  tomb  the 
inscription  which  tells  that  he  was  honored,  not  only  by  the 
Christian  society  of  which  for  nearly  forty  years  he  was 
pastor,  but  throughout  Christendom.  This  sentiment  of 
universal  respect  was  testified  in  America  on  the  day  of  his 
funeral,  by  the  mourning  of  all  Boston,  when  the  bells  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  chapel  joined  with  those  of  church, 
chapel,  and  meeting-house  of  all  Protestant  communities  in 
tolling  for  the  loss  of  one  whom  all  esteemed  and  lamented. 
This   sentiment,    irrespective   of    the   peculiar   opinions    he 


422  ClIANMNC.    CENTKNAKY. 

professed  or  the  peculiar  sect  to  which  he  bekonged,  was 
not  confined  to  his  native  country.  With  the  exception  of 
Jonathan  lulwards  and  Dr.  Robinson,  the  fame  of  Channing 
was,  until  recently,  the  only  standard  of  American  theology 
which  had  reached  the  continent  of  Europe.  It  is  not  often 
that  the  great  French  review  which  bears  the  name  of  the 
Tzvo  Worlds  condescends  to  notice  any  English-speaking 
divine. 

One  of  the  few  exceptions  was  in  the  thoughtful  and  brill- 
iant article  written  by  Remusat,  on  the  life  and  writings  of 
Channing  ;  and,  in  Germany,  the  venerable  and  illustrious 
DoUinger  is  reported  to  have  said  that,  with  one  exception, 
Channing  was  the  only  theologian  that  the  Americans  had 
produced.  What  is  it,  we  may  ask,  which  justifies  this 
wide-spread  fame.'  What  is  it  which  justifies  the  celebra- 
tion of  the  centenary  of  Channing's  birth  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic  .''  First,  let  me  speak  of  the  effects  of  his  char- 
acter. He  was  one  of  the  rare  instances,  rare  in  all  ages  of 
mankind,  of  -a  man  in  whom  was  combined  the  dignity  and 
moderation  of  a  high  ecclesiastic,  or,  if  we  choose  so  to 
put  it,  of  a  calm  philosopher,  with  a  courageous  enthusiasm 
on  behalf  of  the  more  practical  and  popular  objects  of  phi- 
lanthropy. Such  a  union  was,  to  a  certain  extent,  seen  in 
the  career  of  Thomas  Arnold  in  the  Church  of  England  and 
Thomas  Chalmers  in  the  Church  of  Scotland  ;  but  perhaps 
neither  of  these  distinguished  men,  superior  as  they  may  be 
in  other  respects,  presented  so  striking  a  contrast  of  qualities 
as  in  the  union  of  the  shrinking,  cautious  temperament  of 
which  so  many  curious  tales  are  rife  to  this  day  in  Boston, 
with  the  generous,  outspoken  expression  of  what  was  then 
in  that  city  the  unpopular  and  unattractive  cause  of  the 
abolition  of  slavery. 

A  character  of  this  kind  is  doubly  precious,  because,  on 
the  one  hand,  it  helps    to    justify  in  the    hearts  of    other 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  423 

reformers  of  a  wild  and,  so  to  speak,  revolutionary  tendency 
the  value  of  repose,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  tends  to 
redeem  the  views  of  philanthropic  zeal  from  the  reproach 
which  the  recklessness  and  folly  of  their  adherents  often 
provoke  from  the  more  reasonable  and  moderate  champions 
of  light  and  sweetness.  Secondly,  he  combined  what  is  rare 
in  any  country,  but  perhaps  most  rare  in  his  own,  an  unques- 
tionable patriotism  with  a  large  comprehension  and  appre- 
hension of  the  glories  of  other  countries.  He  loved  with 
a  passionate  love  the  scenes  of  his  early  childhood  in  the 
charming  town  of  Newport.  "  No  spot  on  earth,"  he  said, 
"  helped  to  form  me  like  that  beach."  It  is,  indeed,  a  curi- 
ous reflection,  as  we  pass  along  that  stretch  of  sands  and 
those  projecting  crags  which  overlook  the  vast  roll  of  the 
Atlantic  waters,  that  the  same  spot  should  have  nourished 
two  spirits  so  far  asunder  in  their  respective  careers,  yet  so 
similar  in  their  high  aspirations,  as  Channing  and  our  own 
Berkeley.  What  Boston,  the  intellectual  centre  of  Amer- 
ica, was  to  him,  and  what  he  as  its  intellectual  leader 
was  to  Boston,  it  is  needless  to  describe ;  but,  neverthe- 
less, he  never  surrendered  himself  to  the  besetting  tempta- 
tion which  leads  so  many  of  his  countrymen  to  regard 
America  as  the  only  land  of  promise,  the  only  sphere  of 
moral  and  intellectual  progress.  No  Frenchman,  be  he 
Catholic  or  Protestant,  could  have  taken  a  more  appreciative 
view  of  the  character  and  writings  of  Fenelon  than  Chan- 
ning, in  an  essay  which  he  has  devoted  to  the  character  and 
writings  of  the  Archbishop  of  Cambray ;  and  no  English- 
man could  have  been  fired  with  a  warmer  zeal  for  the  great- 
ness and  glory  of  Britain  during  the  Napoleonic  war  than 
was  this  son  of  England's  revolted  children.  The  proof  of 
this,  larger  than  any  local  or  parochial  sympathy,  is  found  in 
the  fact  that  not  once  only,  nor  in  one  generation  only,  Chan- 
ning's  sermons  have  been  preached  in  the  pulpit  at  the  Met- 


4^4  niAXMNG    CKNTENARY. 

ropolitan  Cuthodral  witliout  affording  the  opportunity  for  a 
critical  congrcgatitMi  to  detect  by  any  utterance  of  provincial 
accent  or  thought  the  source  from  which  they  proceeded. 

But  if  this  universality  of  his  sympathy  found  its  deep 
expressitin  in  the  catholicity  of  his  religious  sentiments,  be- 
longing as  he  did  to  the  Unitarian  communion,  which  at  that 
time  almost  formed  what  we  may  call  the  Established  Church 
at  Boston,  he  yet  rose  far  above  it  and  beyond  it,  both  in  his 
particular  expressions  and  his  general  aspirations.  "  I  value 
Unitarianism,"  he  said,  "not  as  a  perfect  system,  but  as 
encouraging  freedom  of  thought,  and  as  breathing  a  mild 
and  tolerant  spirit  into  the  members  of  the  whole  Christian 
body.  I  am  little  of  a  Unitarian.  I  stand  aloof  from  all 
those  who  stand  and  pray  for  a  clearer  light,  who  look  for  a 
purer  and  more  effectual  manifestation  of  Christian  faith.  I 
have  little  or  no  interest  in  Unitarianism  as  a  sect."  He 
strove,  if  we  may  use  his  own  words,  to  seize  the  true  idea  of 
Christ's  character,  to  trace  in  his  history  the  working  of  his 
soul,  to  comprehend  the  divinity  of  his  spirit  ;  he  strove  to 
rise  above  what  was  local,  temporary,  and  partial  in  that 
teaching  to  its  universal,  all-comprehending  truths.  Without 
entering  into  details,  for  which  this  occasion  would  be  un- 
suitable, it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  any  one  who  desires  to 
exercise  a  permanent  influence  over  the  future  must  breathe 
more  or  less  of  the  spirit  which  animated  this  truly  Christian 
philosopher.  "He  is  a  philosopher,"  said  Coleridge,  "in 
both  possible  senses  of  the  word :  he  has  the  love  of  wisdom 
and  the  wisdom  of  love."  Every  one,  of  whatever  church, 
who  identifies  his  teaching  with  the  peculiar  phrases  in 
which  by  ancient  formularies  or  modern  party  spirit  the 
temporary  tendencies  of  this  or  that  church  may  have  been 
expressed,  clogs  the  upward  and  onward  course  of  his 
words  with  an  incumbrance  which  in  after  years  will  prove 
a  serious  obstacle  to  his  reception  on  the  roll  of  those  whose 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  425 

works  will  live  in  every  age  and  every  country.  Channing 
keenly  felt  the  insufficiency  not  only  of  the  past,  but  of 
the  present.  "Till  a  new  reverence  for  truth,"  he  said, 
"  such  as,  I  fear,  is  not  now  felt,  takes  possession  of  some 
gifted  minds,  we  shall  make  but  little  progress.  The  true 
reformation  is  yet  to  come.  The  time  is  perhaps  at  hand, 
when  all  our  present  sects  will  live  only  in  history.  Could  I 
see  before  I  die  but  a  small  gathering  of  men  penetrated 
with  reverence  for  humanity  and  the  spirit  of  freedom,  and 
with  faith  in  a  more  Christian  constitution  of  society,  I 
should  be  content. "  It  is  this  appreciation  of  a  fuller  truth 
than  he  had  himself  attained  which  places  him  in  that  suc- 
cession of  gifted  men  whose  thoughts  formed  the  golden 
age  of  Christian  theology.  Origen,  Clement  of  Alexan- 
dria, in  their  better  and  more  lucid  state,  Chrysostom  and 
Augustine,  Erasmus  in  the  sixteenth  century,  Falkland  and 
Tillotson  in  the  seventeenth,  the  serener  atmosphere  and 
freer  thoughts  which  formed  the  background  of  the  vigorous 
mind  of  Butler,  the  vigorous  common-sense  of  Paley,  and 
the  generous  enthusiasm  of  Wesley  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, Frederick  Robertson  and  Dean  Milman  in  the  nine- 
teenth century, —  to  speak  only  of  the  dead,  and  not  of  the 
living, —  it  is  among  these  that  Channing  will  take  his  place 
as  having  contributed  in  no  mean  degree  toward  the  right 
appreciation  of  the  right,  and  toward  fixing  the  attention  of 
Christendom  on  the  moral  and  spiritual,  and  which  is  also, 
for  that  reason,  the  truly  divine,  the  truly  permanent,  super- 
natural element  of  Christianity. 

DE,  W.  B.  OAEPENTER'S  ADDRESS. 

Dr.  Carpenter  :  Mr.  Chairman,  Ladies,  and  Gentlemen, — 
At  this  late  hour  of  the  evening  I  shall  confine  myself  to  a 
very  few  words  to  express  my  heartiest  accordance  with  all 
that  has  been  said  in  regard  to  the  worth  and  the  vast  infiu- 


426  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

ence  of  the  threat  man  whose  centenary  we  are  here  met  to 
ciMiiniomorate.  And  let  me  bet^in  with  two  little  anecdotes 
which  will  show  the  extent  of  that  influence.  As  long  ago 
as  the  year  1S27,  I  was  staying  with  my  father  at  Newport 
in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  I  being  then  little  more  than  a  boy  ; 
and  he  became  acquainted,  through  the  introduction  of  a 
friend,  with  the  minister  of  the  Independent  Chapel  in  that 
town.  Channing's  essay  upon  Milton  had  then  recently 
reached  this  country ;  and  he  found  that  young  minister  in  a 
state  of  the  highest  excitement,  reading  the  essay,  walking 
up  and  down  his  study.  His  spirit  was  stirred  within  him  : 
he  said  that  he  could  not  sit  still  while  he  read  it.  The 
earnest  utterances  of  that  essay  on  behalf  of  freedom, 
which  were  not  surpassed  by  Jeremy  Taylor  in  his  Liberty 
of  Prophesying,  or  by  Milton  himself  in  his  vigorous  pro- 
tests, stirred  the  mind  of  this  young  minister ;  and  I  will 
now  tell  you  who  that  young  minister  was, —  Thomas  Bin- 
ney.  You  all  know  what  an  important  influence  Thomas 
Binney,  who  removed  to  London  two  years  after  that,  exer- 
cised in  that  great  movement  of  thought,  which  has  com- 
pletely altered  the  aspect  of  the  theology  of  the  Congre- 
gational body,  as,  I  am  sure,  my  friend  Mr.  Brown  will 
agree  with  me.  Another  little  anecdote  refers  to  a  very 
recent  time.  I  take  a  very  great  interest  in  the  advance 
of  free  thought  in  the  various  sections  of  the  great  Scottish 
Presbyterian  Church,  and  early  association  has  led  me  to 
keep  up  communication  with  many  of  its  leaders.  In  cor- 
respondence with  a  friend  last  year,  I  found  that  even  in 
the  straitest  sect  of  Scottish  Calvinism  there  is  an  opinion 
held  that  Channing  and  Martineau  must  be  subjects  of  the 
uncovenanted  mercies  of  God.  They,  of  course,  restrict  to 
themselves  the  covenanted  mercies  ;  but  they  feel  that  such 
men  must  come  within  the  recognition  of  that  great  Being 
who  looks  upon  all  ahke.     Now,  I  am  asked  to  say  some 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  427 

words  with  reference  to  Channing's  advocacy  of  all  move- 
ments relating  to  the  elevation  of  the  human  race.  His 
recognition  of  the  dignity  of  human  nature  has  been  so 
ably  dealt  with  this  evening  that  I  need  not  say  a  word  more 
on  the  subject ;  but  I  would  point  to  this,  that  that  recog- 
nition dominated  every  utterance  that  he  gave  on  these  great 
subjects. 

He  appealed  to  first  principles.  He  was  in  that  respect  a 
prophet.  He  appealed  to  those  first  principles  which  find 
an  echo  in  our  intellectual  nature,  in  our  love  of  truth,  in 
our  moral  nature,  in  our  love  of  right  ;  and  everything  that 
he  uttered  on  these  great  subjects  was  to  encourage  every 
endeavor  for  what  he  called  the  elevation  of  the  soul.  And 
what  he  defined  as  elevation  of  soul  was  force  of  thousfht 
exerted  for  the  acquisition  of  truth, —  force  of  pure,  generous 
feeling,  not  merely  the  entertaining  these  feelings,  but  the 
earnestness  with  which  they  were  felt ;  and  the  force  of 
moral  purpose  in  action,  that  purpose  which  is  cultivated 
by  the  habitual  sense  of  effort  which  he  speaks  of  as  most 
contributing  to  growth.  Man  owes  his  growth,  his  energy, 
chiefly  to  the  strife  of  the  will, —  that  conflict  with  difficulty 
which  we  call  effort  ;  and,  in  those  noble  utterances  of  his 
with  regard  to  liberty,  he  shows  how  all  restraints  tend  to 
the  truest  liberty,  how  man  by  struggling  against  these 
restraints  elevates  his  own  powers  and  becomes  the  victor, 
and  how  every  restraint  that  does  not  foster  that  tendency 
to  liberty  is  evil,  while  every  restraint  that  does  is  good. 
But  there  is  one  part  of  the  grand  essay  on  spiritual  freedom 
which  is  worthy  to  be  compared  with  the  beatitudes  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  where,  in  a  dozen  sentences,  he  says, 
"  I  call  that  man  free  who  struggles  into  the  light  of  free- 
dom "  ;  and  he  goes  on  and  shows  how  every  part  of  our 
nature  is  to  be  freed  by  effort.  In  that  grand  essay,  sir, 
there  is  one  passage  that  impressed  me  on  reading  it  re- 


42S  CHANNINC.    CENTENARY. 

cciitlv  with  iho  force  o{  prophetic  insight  which  cannot,  I 
think,  be  surpassed  b)'  any  utterance, —  that  passage  in 
which  he  adverts  to  the  duty  of  governments.  He  says  : 
"  How  is  the  Government  to  serve  the  cause  of  spiritual 
freedom  in  promoting  energy  and  elevation  of  moral  pur- 
pose ?  Not  by  teaching  or  persuasion,  for  that  is  not  its 
function  ;  but  by  action,  that  is,  by  rigidly  conforming  it- 
self in  all  its  measures  to  the  moral  or  Christian  law,  by 
the  most  public  and  solemn  manifestation  of  reverence  for 
right,  for  justice,  for  the  general  weal,  for  the  principles  of 
virtue.  In  its  relations  to  other  governments,  it  should 
invariably  adhere  to  the  principles  of  justice  and  philan- 
thropy. By  its  moderation,  sincerity,  uprightness,  and 
pacific  spirit  toward  foreign  States,  by  abstaining  from 
secret  arts  and  unfair  advantages,  by  cultivating  free  and 
mutually  beneficial  intercourse,  it  should  cherish  among 
its  citizens  the  ennobling  conscience  of  belonging  to  the 
human  family,  of  having  a  common  interest  with  the  human 
race."  Then  he  says  :  "  As  it  is  the  first  duty  of  a  states- 
man to  build  up  the  moral  energy  of  a  people,  he  who 
weakens  it  inflicts  an  injury  which  no  talent  can  repair, 
nor  shall  any  splendor  of  circumstances  or  any  momentary 
success  avert  for  him  the  infamy  which  he  has  earned. 
Let  public  men  fear  nothing  so  much  as  to  sap  the  moral 
convictions  of  a  people  by  unrighteous  legislation  or  a  self- 
ish policy.  Let  them  put  faith  in  virtue  as  the  strength 
of  nations.  Let  them  not  be  disheartened  by  temporary  ill- 
success."  Now,  since  those  words  were  written,  what  have 
we  seen  as  the  verification  of  them  .-*  We  had  sden  the 
downfall  of  the  slave  power  in  the  United  States  ;  we  had 
seen  a  nation  rising  in  its  might,  in  response  to  the  appeals 
of  great  men,  and  destroying  that  slave  power.  What  hap- 
pened in  a  neighboring  kingdom  ?  We  had  seen  a  man 
raising  himself  by  a  combination    of   circumstances  —  with 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  429 

great  ability  of  his  own,  no  doubt  —  to  the  supreme 
power,  becoming  the  ally  of  England,  and  for  a  time  the 
trusted  friend  of  our  Sovereign  and  her  Consort  ;  and  we 
saw  that  man  alienating  by  secret  arts,  by  underhand  meas- 
ures, for  his  own  aggrandizement  and  the  aggrandizement 
of  his  nation,  as  he  believed,  all  the  sympathy  which  he 
possessed,  and  exciting  that  universal  suspicion  in  every 
country  in  Europe  which  led  to  his  downfall. 

Now,  I  need  not  to  point  the  moral  with  regard  to  our 
present  state ;  and  what  satisfies  me  of  the  soundness  of  the 
heart  of  England  is  that  it  has  shown  that  it  will  not  sup- 
port the  statesman  who  attempts  to  aggrandize  England  by 
secret  compacts  and  underhand  dealings.  Only  one  word 
more  in  reference  to  Channing's  advocacy  of  the  temper- 
ance cause,  because  that  is  as  pregnant  an  instance  as  I 
could  produce  of  the  value  of  the  appeal  to  first  principles. 
Channing  distinctly  states  that  the  great  evil  of  intemper- 
ance is  the  enslavement  of  the  man  who  gives  way  to  it. 
All  other  evils,  in  his  mind,  are  subordinate  to  this.  He 
is  glad  that  the  dreadful  nature  of  this  vice  should  make 
itself  apparent  in  the  evil  it  produces  ;  but  he  says  it  is 
in  the  vice  itself  that  the  greatest  evil  exists.  Now,  sir, 
these  are  words  which  appeal  to  our  deepest  and  at  the  same 
time  to  our  highest  feelings  ;  and  I  look  upon  Channing  as 
the  one  who,  more  than  any  other  in  modern  times,  brought 
all  social  questions  to  the  test  of  the  highest  principles,  and 
who,  in  laying  down  those  highest  principles,  did  not  merely 
formularize  them  as  part  of  a  moral  code,  but  appealed  to 
our  own  moral  sense  and  our  own  love  of  truth  and  right, 
and  our  own  love  of  humanity  and  all  that  is  highest  and 
best  in  humanity,  to  give  them  effect.  And  I  may  conclude 
by  a  reference  to  one  whose  name  is  known  to  all  of  you, 
and  I  think  without  egotism  I  may  name  the  name  of  Mary 
Carpenter.     I  would  say  that  it  was  entirely  in  the  spirit  of 


430  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Channin.u's  utterances  that  she  worked.  She  had  faith  in 
hutnan  nature  ;  she  had  faith  that  there  was  a  holy  spot  in 
every  child's  mind  that  could  be  touched  ;  and  she  had  a 
faith  in  God,  who  would  help  to  guide  her  in  all  her  attempts 
at  the  elevation  of  those  whom  the  crimes,  as  she  consid- 
ered, of  society,  had  degraded  from  the  high  position  to 
which  human  nature  is  capable  of  being  exalted. 

DR.  COLLIER'S  ADDRESS. 

The  Rev.  Dr.  Laird  Collier  :  Mr.  CJiairman,  Ladies,  and 
Gentlemen, —  It  seems  to  me  that  this  centennial  anniver- 
sary of  the  birth  of  Channing  should  mark  not  the  close, 
but  the  opening  of  an  era.  We  should  not  expend  all  our 
thought  in  commemoration,  but  some  of  our  will  in  a  holy 
consecration  to  live,  to  propagate,  and  to  enact  the  principles 
that  Channing  preached.  And  not  one  of  those  principles 
has  found  enactment  in  the  customs  of  the  nation.  Not  one 
has  taken  deep  root  in  the  hearts  of  the  Christian  public. 
First  of  all,  if  for  anything,  it  seems  to  me  that  Channing 
stood  for  religious  equality ;  and  by  that  Channing  never 
meant  mere  religious  toleration.  He  was  the  last  man  to 
have  his  religious  opinions  merely  tolerated.  When  Abner 
Kneeland  was  arrested,  and  convicted  before  the  High  Court, 
as  it  was  called,  of  Massachusetts,  for  publishing  what  was 
termed  a  bit  of  atheism  in  the  free-thinking  paper  the  Inves- 
tigator, Channing  wrote  a  petition  for  the  release  of  this 
atheist.  His  own  Church  turned  their  backs  upon  the  peti- 
tion, and  most  of  his  leading  men  signed  a  counter-petition. 
He  not  only  signed  the  petition,  but  he  called  a  public  meet- 
ing in  Faneuil  Hall,  and  aroused  the  sentiment  of  Boston  in 
favor  of  absolute  freedom  of  thought  and  absolute  freedom 
of  speech.  He  meant  by  religious  liberty  the  subordination 
of    Christian   dogma  to    Christian   charity ;  but   I   appeal   to 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  431 

you,  if  it  be  not  true  that  dogma  and  superstition  are  still 
subsidized  on  all  hands.  And  where  may  we  look  for  human 
equity  or  social  equality.^  If  I  were  in  Boston  to-night 
instead  of  being"  in  London,  I  could  be  a  little  freer  in  what 
I  had  got  to  say.  I  rejoiced  with  a  great  rejoicing  at  Mr. 
Brown's  outspokenness.  Mr.  Channing  wrote,  I  think,  to 
Harriet  Martineau,  "Aristocracy  can  only  look  upon  man  to 
patronize  him,  not  as  bearing  the  image  of  man,  and  the 
image  of  God  in  the  image  of  man."  Man  was  the  pride  of 
Channing's  intellect,  man  was  the  passion  of  Channing's 
heart, —  man  not  as  hero,  man  not  as  saint,  but  simply  man. 
And  to-night  we  find  men  starving  in  the  hovel,  swinging 
from  the  gallows,  staring  at  us  from  behind  the  gratings  of  a 
prison,  and  dying  upon  the  field  of  battle,  in  war  waged 
without  cause  and  without  explanation.  Now,  when  I  speak 
of  Channing's  principles,  you  will  quite  understand  that  I  do 
not  refer  to  his  casual  and  speculative  opinions.  He  was  a 
Congregationalist  in  his  views  of  church  policy  :  he  was  a 
Unitarian  in  his  conception  of  the  person  and  character  of 
God.  Had  he  been  living  in  our  day  with  the  same  person- 
ality, I  am  not  quite  sure  that  he  would  have  been  either 
Congregationalist  or  Unitarian  ;  but  of  this  I  am  sure, —  that 
he  would  not  have  been  less,  but  larger.  But  he  did  not  go 
forth  to  fill  the  earth  with  contentions  about  creeds  of  falli- 
ble men  :  he  was  no  more  wedded  to  his  own  opinion,  as  he 
said,  than  he  was  to  the  opinions  of  other  men  ;  but  it  has 
been  repeated  here  to-night  twice  that  Coleridge  said  of 
Channing  after  he  had  had  a  personal  interview  with  him, 
"  He  subordinates  the  true  to  the  good  without  encroach- 
ment upon  the  health  of  either :  he  has  the  love  of  wisdom 
and  the  wisdom  of  love."  Channing  was  not  supremely  a 
theologian,  he  was  a  mystic  :  he  was  not  pre-eminently  a 
philosopher,  he  was  a  poet.  The  last  words  he  uttered  on 
earth  were  these :  "  I  have  received    many  messages   from 


432  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

the  spirit."  lie  said  late  in  life  that  he  had  experienced 
relii;ion,  that  he  had  e.xperienced  a  changed  heart, —  so  great 
a  change  that  it  ought  to  be  called  the  new  birth, —  in  the 
twentieth  year  of  his  age.  Now,  friends  and  brethren,  a 
Rationalist  would  analyze  these  sentences,  and  say  that 
Channing  was  mistaken.  "There  is  no  such  thing  as  spirit : 
there  are  no  messages  from  the  spirit."  But  the  mystic  and 
the  poet  knows  there  is  spirit,  and  that  there  are  messages 
from  the  spirit ;  and  it  was  these  messages  from  the  spirit 
that  stirred  and  fired  Channing's  soul,  and  fearlessly  he 
went  forth  to  preach  them. 

Channing  was  a  Unitarian  minister  in  Boston.  And  when 
I  tell  you  that  we  might  have  foretold  from  the  circum- 
stances in  which  he  lived,  the  very  spiritual  air  which  he 
breathed,  that  he  would  have  been  a  Unitarian  minister,  I 
do  not  mean  to  say  that  his  theology  was  mine  or  yours,  but 
that  his  theology  was  the  theology  not  only  of  his  head,  but 
of  his  heart ;  and  he  said  that  Unitarian  theology  was  meant, 
in  his  opinion,  not  only  to  enlarge  the  spiritual  vision,  but  to 
increase  the  fervor  of  the  heart.  When  I  say  that  he  was  a 
preacher,  I  mean  that  he  was  a  preacher  by  temperament. 
He  was  a  preacher  like  Savonarola,  like  Chrysostom,  like 
Chalmers,  like  Wesley,  with  a  burning,  agonizing  love  for 
men.  But  he  was  trained  to  be  a  preacher.  During  his  col- 
lege career,  two  or  three  times  a  week  he  entered  debating 
societies  ;  and  he  tells  us  he  was  on  his  feet  on  an  average 
two  or  three  times  a  week,  learning  to  speak,  learning  to  talk 
to  the  people.  He  was  without  imposing  physique.  Never 
a  day  from  the  time  he  began  his  ministr\'  till  he  closed  it 
did  he  have  generous  health.  And  yet  this  man, —  whom  I 
would  not  class  among  the  highest  in  the  world  of  genius, 
certainly  not  with  a  comprehensive  intellectual  training,  for 
he  graduated  at  Harvard  with  less  technical  knowledge  than 
would  now  be  required  for  matriculation  at  the  same  Uni- 


CELEBRATION    AT    LONDON.  433 

versity, —  this  man  without  physique,  without  health,  with- 
out superlative  intellectual  genius,  without  comprehensive 
learning,  rose  to  be  the  prophet  of  his  century.  America 
has  raised  up  illustrious  men,  statesmen,  scholars,  philan- 
thropists, and  divines, —  Washington,  Lincoln,  Garrison,  and 
Channing  ;  and  the  greatest  of  these  is  Channing.  They  had 
faith,  and  they  had  hope  ;  but  he  had  charity,  and  "  the  great- 
est of  these  is  charity,"  — charity  not  by  might,  not  by  power, 
not  by  the  will  of  the  flesh,  but  by  the  will  of  God.  We 
claim  to  be  in  sympathy  with  the  principles  and  views  to 
which  he  consecrated  his  life.  It  is  in  reverence  of  these 
that  we  have  come  together.  But,  brethren  and  friends,  the 
immortal  Channing  asks  not  for  mere  hero-worship.  He 
gave  none,  and  he  expects  none.  Would  we  could  catch  the 
fervor  of  his  mind,  the  glow  of  his  heart,  the  glory  of  his 
deeds  !  Then  we  should  go  forth  rekindling  the  fires  of  love 
with  rational,  with  ennobling  Christianity ;  we  should  go 
forth  to  plead  with  sordid  and  with  sinful  men  of  our  gener- 
ation, as  he  pleaded  with  servile  and  selfish  men  of  his  gen- 
eration, to  work  the  works  of  God,  that  liberty  may  speed  to 
the  ends  of  the  earth,  that  peace  and  progress  may  abide  in 
all  its  nations,  that  simple  truth  and  Christian  charity  may 
be  the  only  contemplation  between  children  of  the  same 
family,  until  we  all  come  to  owe  no  man  anything,  but  to 
love  one  another. 

At  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  Collier's  remarks,  a  few  words 
were  said  by  the  Rev.  W.  Dorling.  The  Rev.  H.  lerson  re- 
ferred to  the  absence  of  the  Rev.  William  H.  Channing  in 
America,  and  said  he  should  be  glad  to  receive  subscriptions 
toward  the  building  of  the  Channing  Memorial  Church  in 
Newport.  After  a  vote  of  thanks  to  the  Chairman,  the  pro- 
ceedings terminated. 


29 


THE  CELEBRATION  AT  LIVERPOOL. 


MEETING  AT   ST.  GEORGE'S   HALL. 

The  centenary  of  Dr.  Channing  was  celebrated  last  even- 
ing at  St.  George's  Hall,  by  a  large  and  brilliant  assemblage. 
The  celebration  commenced  by  a  large  number  of  ladies, 
gentlemen,  and  young  people  partaking  of  an  excellent  tea. 
Besides  this,  there  was  a  very  interesting  exhibition  of  micro- 
scopes and  other  objects.  Shortly  after  eight  o'clock,  the 
ladies  and  gentlemen  adjourned  to  the  small  concert  hall, 
and  were  joined  by  many  others  who  had  not  been  able  to 
attend  the  earlier  proceedings.  Mr.  H.  A.  Bright  presided 
in  the  early  part  of  the  meeting,  and  was  succeeded  by  Mr. 
W.  H.  Meade-King.  There  were  also  present  the  Revs. 
Charles  Beard,  G.  Beaumont,  W.  Binns,  W.  H.  Dallinger, 
G.  Fox,  H.  W.  Hawkes,  T.  Holland,  E.  Howse,  T.  Lloyd, 
T.  Jones,  J.  Lee,  D.  Davies,  E.  Hassan,  J.  E.  Odgers,  C.  J. 
Perry,  R.  Pilcher,  H.  S.  Solly,  J.  H.  Thom,  W.  E.  Turner, 
and  J.  F.  Williams  ;  and  Messrs.  A.  Booth,  F.  H.  Boult, 
C.  T.  Bowring,  C.  Botterill,  William  Bowring,  G.  F.  Chan- 
trell,  J.  B.  Cooke,  J.  T.  Ellerbeck,  H.  Fernie,  H.  M.  Guthrie, 
F.  H.  Gossage,  W.  Holland,  W.  D.  Holt,  George  Holt, 
Meade-King,  H.  Jevons,  C.  W.  Jones,  E.  English,  Goffey, 
T.   E.  Paget,  R.   Robinson,  J.   Samuelson,    H.    Tate,    J.    C. 


CELEBRATION  AT  LIVERPOOL.  435 

Thomson,  W.  Thornely,  Barnes,  Sproule,  H.  Young,  Dr. 
J.  M.  Johnson,  etc. 

Mr.  H.  A.  Bright,  who  was  received  with  loud  applause, 
said:  This  centennial  celebration  of  Dr.  Channing  is  surely 
a  very  remarkable  occurrence.  That  there  should  be  such 
a  celebration  in  the  case  of  some  great  poet,  whose  burning 
words  have  sunk  deep  into  the  minds  of  his  fellow-country- 
men, is  intelligible  enough.  That  the  anniversary  of  some 
great  victory,  when  a  nation  has  achieved  her  freedom  or 
a  tyrant  has  been  crushed,  should  be  held  in  honor,  is  a 
matter  of  no  surprise.  But  why,  in  the  very  midst  of  pres- 
ent political  strife,  should  men  in  London,  Manchester,  and 
Belfast,  and,  a  few  days  later  on,  we,  in  Liverpool,  meet  to- 
gether in  honor  of  an  American  theologian  ? 

Why  is  the  name  of  Channing  being  commemorated  alike 
in  the  city  of  the  pontiffs  and  amid  the  poor  dwellings  of 
the  capital  of  Iceland.''  Well,  I  suppose  there  is  but  one 
answer,  the  only  one  and  the  true  one.  It  is  because 
men  feel  that  they  owe  Channing  a  distinct  debt  of  grati- 
tude, which  they  would  only  too  thankfully  repay,  though 
they  well  know  that  recognition  and  not  repayment  is  alone 
now  possible.  Nearly  ninety  years  have  passed  since  Dr. 
Priestley  (and  I  wish  to  pay  a  passing  homage  to  one  to 
whom  modern  Unitarians,  certainly  not  men  of  science, 
have  been,  perhaps,  a  shade  unthankful)  was  driven  from 
his  home  by  a  Church  and  State  mob,  and  took  refuge  in 
the  freer  lands  across  the  seas.  He  was  a  good  and  true 
man,  if  ever  there  was  one, —  kindly  and  genial,  a  great 
scholar,  a  learned  theologian,  an  illustrious  philosopher,  and, 
above  all,  a  confessor,  almost  a  martyr  for  conscience'  sake  ; 
yet  Priestley's  name  fails  to  stir  us  like  the  name  of  Chan- 
ning. Channing  was  twenty-four  years  old  when  Priestley 
died;  but  I  doubt  whether  in  any  case  he  owed  much  to  his 
teaching.     But  other  influences  had  already  been  at  work, 


43^>  CHANNIXG    CENTENARY. 

and,  not  the  least,  the  intiuencc  of  the  all-pervading  Mother 
Nature.  As  Channing,  still  a  youth,  paced  the  rocky  shores 
of  his  native  State,  Rhode  Island,  he  drank  in  the  spirit  of 
freedom  and  devotion  from  the  wind  and  wave.  The  influ- 
ence of  such  a  scene  had  been  felt  centuries  before  by  the 
old  British  monk  Morgan,  who  was  known  afterward  as 
Pelagius,  because,  so  tradition  tells  us,  he  was  constantly 
seeking  fresh  inspiration  from  the  pelagos,  or  ocean,  and 
who  was  in  his  time  the  champion  of  the  freedom  of  the 
human  will,  as  Channing  was  in  later  times.  One  had  Saint 
Augustine  for  an  opponent,  the  other  had  the  Calvinism  of 
Jonathan  Edwards ;  and  both  first  learned  the  lesson  of  free- 
dom from  the  sights  and  sounds  of  the  natural  world.  But 
that  strand  on  which  Channing  walked  had  a  special  associa- 
tion of  its  own.  It  was  a  part  of  that  coast  where,  in  the 
year  1620, 

"A  band  of  pilgrims  moored  their  bark 
On  the  wild  New  England  shore." 

They  had  fled  from  ecclesiastical  tyranny,  and  Channing 
would  not  that  any  ecclesiastical  tyranny  of  any  kind  or  sort 
should  still  remain.  "  Freedom  to  worship  God  "  should  be 
absolute  and  uncontested.  And  now  let  me  say,  in  a  few 
words,  what  I  conceive  to  be  Channing's  chief  claim  to  our 
gratitude,  our  respect,  our  veneration.  It  is  not  that  he  held 
certain  speculative  opinions  which  we  call  Unitarian,  though, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  has  done  more  to  spread  those  opin- 
ions than  any  one  man  before  or  since.  But,  in  the  first 
place,  I  doubt  whether  those  of  us  who  agree  most  fully 
with  Channing's  speculative  opinions  admire  him  chiefly  on 
that  account.  And  I  doubt  not  there  are  many  here  who 
do  not  agree  with  these  opinions,  and  who  think  they  err, 
either  by  defect  or  excess,  either  going  too  far  or  not  going 
far  enough.  Nor  is  it  as  a  great  man  of  letters  that  we 
admire  him.     His  writinccs  are  all  condensed  into  that  won- 


CELEBRATION    AT    LIVERPOOL.  437 

derfiil  little  one-shilling  edition.  He  wrote  no  great  book, — 
nothing  but  a  few  essays,  a  few  lectures,  and  a  good  many 
sermons.  His  style  is  pure  and  dignified,  but  somewhat  dif- 
fuse, and  only  at  times  reaches  to  any  great  height  of  elo- 
quence. And  yet  how  noble  is  his  appreciation  of  Fenelon, 
how  sympathetic  his  character  of  Milton,  how  scathing  his 
denunciation  of  Napoleon !  Still,  on  the  whole,  there  have 
been  many  far  greater  men  of  letters,  for  whom  no  centen- 
nial would  ever  be  suggested.  No,  the  reason  of  our  regard 
is  the  greatness  of  Channing's  character.  It  is  not  for  what 
he  did  or  for  what  he  thought,  but  for  what  he  was,  that  we 
hold  him  so  high  in  our  affections.  I  believe  him  to  have 
been  one  of  the  best  men  who  ever  lived,  and  it  is  his  ex- 
ample rather  than  his  teaching  which  is  influencing  men  for 
good   to-day.     There  is  a  well-known  passage   in   Goethe's 

Wilhehn  Meister,  where  the  education  of  the  young  is  to 
be  taught  symbolically;  and  the  recollection  of  this  comes 
to  me  as  I  think  of  Channing.  The  first  lesson  is  to  look 
upward, —  it  is  the  lesson  of  reverence  for  what  is  above. 
Channing  learned  this  lesson  early,  and  teaches  it  to  us. 
He  had  for  the  moment  to  help  to  destroy  old  forms  of  faith, 
but  he  would  "  uproot  the  false  by  planting  of  the  true." 
His  very  process  of  destruction  was  a  process  of  construc- 
tion, and  meanwhile  there  was  no  frivolity  or  flippancy  in 
the  means  he  used  or  the  words  he  spoke.  The  truths  he 
held  were  sacred  to  him  with  a  sanctity  beyond  expression. 
Nothing  base  or  bad  could,  we  are  told,  live  in  his  presence 
for  a  moment.  He  had  looked  up,  and  learned  to  reverence 
what  was    above.       And   the    second    lesson,    according   to 

Wilhehn  Meister,  was  to  look  down,  and  reverence  what 
was  below.  Channing  found  the  curse  of  slavery  heavy  on 
the  land,  and  his  first  impulse  was  to  leave  the  question  to 
others  to  settle.  Ikit  he  looked  down,  and  he  saw  the  dig- 
nity of  man  debased  beneath   the  foot  of  the  slave-owner  ; 


4,V^  ClIyVNNING    CKNTKKAKV. 

and  he  resolved  to  ujilift  it,  not  alone  for  the  sake  of  the 
individual,  but  for  the  sake  of  human  nature.  And  so  with 
men  of  despised  opinions.  No  one  could  have  had  less  sym- 
pathy than  he  with  Theodore  Parker's  special  views;  but  he 
would  have  no  one  insulted  on  account  of  his  views,  and  so 
in  defence  of  Parker  he  risked  the  good  opinion  of  his  fellow- 
ministers,  as  in  the  case  of  slavery  he  had  risked  the  good 
opinion  of  his  fellow-citizens  and  of  the  leading  laity  of  his 
church.  And,  lastly,  the  pupil  of  the  story  had  a  third 
lesson  to  learn, —  of  reverence  to  himself  and  the  facts 
around  him.  He  must  now  look  straight  onward,  ready  to 
act  on  his  own  convictions,  and  bear  his  part  as  one  of 
many.  And  Channing  was  now  indeed  foremost  and  most 
earnest  among  those  of  his  time,  among  those  of  any  time, 

"  Whose  one  bond  is  that  all  have  been 
Unspotted  by  the  world." 

He  had  learned  the  three  great  lessons  of  the  three  forms  of 
reverence, —  piety,  compassion,  and  earnestness.  By  these 
moral  gifts,  his  preaching  became  so  powerful  for  good  that 
long  before  he  died  he  had  become  one  of  the  strongest  in- 
fluences in  New  England.  And,  when  he  died,  his  charity 
was  felt  to  have  been  so  wide  that  the  Roman  Catholics 
were  touched  at  the  thought  of  it,  and  tolled  the  bell  of  their 
cathedral  when  his  body  was  carried  to  its  last  home.  And 
then  it  was  that  here  in  England,  as  I  am  old  enough  to  re- 
member, a  sense  of  loss  came  upon  us  all,  and  in  all  our 
chapels  sermons  were  preached  to  remind  us  that  our  great- 
est leader  had  fallen.  But  to-night,  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
we  will  not  think  of  what  we  lost  when  Channing  died,  but 
of  what  we  gained  when  he  was  born.  If  Southey,  the  High 
Churchman,  could  speak  of  him  in  the  Quarterly  Review  as 
"an  honor  to  any  age  and  any  country,"  what  must  be  our 
feelings  toward  him }     It  is  for  us  to  imitate  his  example,  to 


CELEBRATION  AT  LIVERPOOL.  439 

spread  his  teachings,  and  to  show  our  gratitude  not  in  bar- 
ren words,  but  fruitful  deeds. 

Mr.  Bright  then  vacated  the  chair,  which  was  filled  by 
Mr.  Meade-King,  after  the  first-named  gentleman  had  called 
upon 

The  Rev.  J.  H.  Thom.  He  said :  We  hold  our  celebra- 
tion to-night  under  circumstances  of  disadvantage.  Duties 
to  the  nation,  it  was  apprehended,  might,  upon  the  7th  of 
April,  have  been  agitating  the  atmosphere, —  duties  which 
Channing  would  have  regarded  as  supreme  above  all  per- 
sonal considerations,  but  which  might  not  have  contributed 
to  those  calm  depths  of  contemplation  in  which  alone  his 
image  can  be  mirrored  and  seen.  Yet  perhaps  it  was  un- 
fortunate for  them  ;  for  they  could  not  have  been  more  glad- 
dened, strengthened,  and  aided  in  the  causes  which  were 
then  discussed, —  causes  which  Channing  had  most  at  heart, 
—  the  brotherhood  of  weaker  races  and  hate  of  oppressive 
wars.  We  certainly  should  have  been  raised  by  his  spirit 
far  above  local  or  temporary  defeat  into  regions  of  faith, 
where  justice  and  mercy  universally  prevail.  And  not 
only  are  we  late  in  the  field.  The  mighty  reapers  have 
been  there  before  us,  gathering  in  the  richest  sheaves  and 
presenting  them  in  a  perfect  assortment ;  and  we  are  but 
the  poor  gleaners  of  what  they  have  left.  That  would  be  a 
positive  advantage ;  for  the  field  is  of  inexhaustible  richness 
and  variety,  if  only  we  can  presume  that  all  that  has  been 
said  at  London  and  Manchester  and  elsewhere  was  known 
to  every  person  present,  and  that  we  had  only  to  follow  those 
leaders,  gathering  up  what  even  their  open  arms  will  not 
hold  in  one  embrace,  and  adding  something,  it  may  be,  of 
the  finishing  hand  to  their  incomplete  work.  That  all  the 
essential  things  have  been  said  already,  and  said  in  the  best 
way,  does  not  disconcert  us  :  rather,  gladly  do  wc  appropri- 
ate it  all  to  enrich  our  own  offering  ;  for  wc  arc  here  to  bear 


.\.\0  CllANNING    CENTENARY.    , 

a  continuous  testimony,  to  give  our  share  to  the  greatest 
debt  man  can  owe  to  man,  and  to  share  the  general  tribute 
to  the  friend  and  benefactor  of  all  English-speaking  people, 
and  not  only  English  people,  but  French,  Italian,  Hunga- 
rian, and  Siiani.sli.  And,  speaking  of  their  debt  of  gratitude, 
this  generation  can  hardly  know  how  great  it  was,  nor  can 
many  recall  that  to  which  Mr.  Bright  alluded, —  that  unpar- 
alleled testimony  to  him  in  the  sudden  sinking  of  the  heart 
in  the  friends  of  light  and  liberty  in  both  continents  when 
his  death  was  known,  as  if  every  evil  cause  was  stronger 
and  every  righteous  cause  weaker  than  before.  Wellington 
said  that  Napoleon's  presence  on  the  field  was  equal  to  thirty 
thousand  men  ;  but  here  the  loss  was  the  only  man  who 
could  make  his  voice  heard  in  both  Worlds, — the  Old  and  the 
New.  The  greatest  soldier  when  he  is  dead  gains  no  more 
victories,  but  the  prophet  lives  in  ever-widening  triumph. 
And,  of  us  who  have  been  for  fifty  years  and  more  under  the 
unspent  influence  of  his  quickening  life,  few  can  remember 
its  first  electric  stroke.  I  remember  it.  I  remember  a  sense 
of  having  been  new-born.  I  cannot  speak  worthily  of  Chan- 
ning,  but  I  can  acknowledge  my  debt.  Mr.  Thom  then  re- 
viewed the  influence  which  Channing's  character  had  upon 
himself,  and  proceeded :  Now,  in  a  word,  what  did  Chan- 
ning  do }  He  lifted  the  religion  out  of  controversy,  out  of 
criticism,  out  of  a  wrangle  about  the  texts,  into  healthy  and 
inexhaustible  life,  shining  in  the  face  of  Christ.  He  did  for 
us  what  the  great  teachers  desired  to  do  for  the  Jews.  This 
is  what  Channing  did  for  the  Church  to  which  he  belonged. 
We  are  reminded,  and  by  those  who  gave  him  the  first  place, 
that  he  was  not  a  critic,  nor  a  great  scholar,  nor  a  learned 
theologian  versed  in  the  methods  of  historical  investigation 
and  intimately  acquainted  with  all  ancient  religions.  Be  it 
so.  The  same,  I  think,  might  be  said,  and  without  loss  of 
reverence  or  indebtedness,  of  a  greater  than  he.     But  I  have 


CELEBRATION  AT  LIVERPOOL.  44 1 

seen  it  laid  down  by  the  highest  Hving  authorities  upon 
these  matters  that  the  result  of  the  modern  critical  testing 
of  the  literary  and  historical  value  of  the  New  Testament 
documents  is  this, —  that  it  brought  back  the  living  Christ  of 
the  work  ;  that  it  inaugurated  a  second  coming  of  the  Son 
of  Man ;  and  that  it  has  caused  us  to  place  the  spiritual  facts 
of  history  in  the  place  of  secularistic  systems.  Now,  that 
result  was  exactly  the  result  which  Channing  reached,  not 
by  a  critical,  but  by  a  spiritual  method.  All  honor  to  criti- 
cism in  its  place,  but  at  its  best  it  only  clears  the  way  to 
unobstructive  vision.  Nothing  intercepted,  nothing  stood 
between  Channing  and  the  light  directed.  Thirty-seven 
years  ago,  I  had  to  speak  of  Channing  from  the  pulpit  and 
from  the  press,  because  the  offices  I  then  held  toward  the 
pulpit  and  the  press  required  me  so  to  do.  Let  Channing 
speak  for  himself  by  his  works.  Only  the  year  before  his 
death,  Channing  issued  a  corrected  edition  of  his  works,  with 
an  elaborate  preface.  The  introduction,  in  which  Channing 
concentrates  and  reflects  himself,  is  less  than  ten  pages ;  and 
the  one-volume  edition  of  his  works,  with  the  correspond- 
ence, except  for  the  time  that  it  might  make  you  meditate, 
would  be  but  a  short  evening's  reading.  We  have  seen,  and 
all  know,  Channing's  predominant  thought, —  the  central 
light  of  his  conscience ;  hence,  the  mighty  monotone  of  his 
mind,  like  the  monotone  of  the  ocean.  The  natural  history 
of  the  religious  development  and  action  of  Channing's  char- 
acter is  most  instructiv'e,  for  it  is  the  same  as  all  those  who 
have  made  the  spiritual  era  of  the  world.  There  was  an 
early  time  when  Channing  seemed  to  be  absorbed  in  piety, — 
not  yet  a  warrior  for  the  right,  a  good  soldier  of  Jesus  Christ 
on  the  battle-field  of  the  world, —  a  youthful  Christ  himself, 
retired  within  the  secrets  and  recesses  of  his  being.  This 
earnestness  is  the  feeling  of  Channing  which  comes  out  viv- 
idly as  they  flash  the  light  to  one  another.    Channing  pointed 


44-  CIlANNlNc;    CKNTl'-NAKV. 

out  lo  Hlanco  White  the  on-ors  which  are  to  be  deplored  ; 
ami  White's  answer  is  in  the  widest  catholic  spirit,  and  yet 
he  lays  his  nni;er  upon  the  true  source  of  religious  faithful- 
ness wherever  it  exists.  In  conclusion,  the  reverend  speaker 
said:  Music  has  made  a  lar_L;'e  part  of  om-  celebrations  to- 
night, whether  with  the  knowledge  or  instinct  of  its  suita- 
bleness I  do  not  know  ;  but  Channing  himself  said  of  music 
that  it  reached  ilepths  in  his  being  beyond  all  other  influ- 
ences, that  it  extended  to  his  conscience,  and  that  it  gave 
him  new  revelations  of  immortality  and  heaven.  The 
speaker  then,  after  making  a  short  allusion  to  the  impetus 
that  Channing's  writing  gave  for  spiritual  advancement  in 
their  minds,  sat  down  amid  loud  applause. 

The  Rev.  Charles  Beard  said :  If,  ladies  and  gentlemen, 
Mr.  Thom  found  himself  in  a  difficulty,  how  must  I  feel  after 
you  have  listened  to  a  speech  so  exquisitely  impressive  in 
its  personal  reminiscences,  and  so  widely  reaching  and  so 
deeply  penetrating  in  its  statements  of  i-cligious  truth  .-*  And 
I  am  also  in  the  farther  difficulty  that  I  am  conscious  that 
the  evening  has  already  far  advanced,  and  that  the  Chaii-man 
would  have  done  well  to  accept  the  offer  which  I  made  to 
him  a  moment  ago  to  cut  me  out  of  the  programme,  and  to 
let  you  arrive  at  home  in  decent  time.  We  are  indeed  in  a 
perplexity,  because  this  subject  has  been  discussed  again  and 
again,  and  every  possible  aspect  of  it  has  already  been  laid 
before  the  public  by  speakers  and  writers  with  great  oppor- 
tunities of  knowledge  and  great  powers  of  expression.  But 
the  other  day,  while  you  were  engaged  in  your  ordinary 
morning  worship,  I  made  a  pilgrimage  to  the  grave  of  The- 
odore Parker,  which  lies  in  the  Protestant  cemetery  at  the 
gate  of  Florence,  and  the  violets  shed  their  fragrance  under 
my  feet,  the  sad  cypresses  shot  their  green  flames  overhead, 
and  all  round  about  were  the  hum  and  the  noise  of  that  great 
and  famous  city  over  which    Dante  yearned,  which   Michel 


CELEBRATION  AT  LIVERPOOL.  443 

Angclo  loved  with  all  the  passion  of  his  soul,  and  which 
Savonarola  awoke  to  brief  repentance  from  its  sins  ;  and  it 
struck  my  sense  that  it  would  be  possible  to  give  some  little 
novelty  to  the  treatment  of  the  subject  which  is  asked  of  me 
to-night,  if  I  were  to  venture  for  a  few  moments  upon  a 
parallel  between  those  two  great  souls  which  it  was  the  fort- 
une of  Boston — not  a  very  considerable  city  in  point  of 
population  —  to  produce  within  a  very  few  years  of  one 
another,  because,  liovvcver  their  differences  have  been  exajr- 
gerated  by  partisan  feeling  on  either  side,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  whatever,  to  any  one  who  looks  at  their  life  and  writ- 
ings from  some  little  distance  in  point  of  time  and  from  an 
impartial  point  of  criticism,  that  they  were  one  in  far  more 
than  they  were  two, —  that  Parker  would  never  have  been 
possible  without  Channing,  and  that  one  of  the  points  of 
Channing's  life  which  we  reflect  upon  with  the  greatest 
pleasure  is  that,  at  the  moment  of  the  crisis  of  Parker's  fate, 
he  said,  "  Give  my  love  to  Mr.  Parker,  and  tell  him  to  speak 
his  whole  heart."  Now,  I  said  in  the  first  place  that  Parker 
would  not  have  been  possible  without  Channing.  Where 
except  from  Channing  did  he  derive  that  boundless  faith  in 
human  nature  which  was  so  strongly  characteristic  of  the 
older  preacher  .-'  Where  but  from  Channing  did  he  derive 
that  intensely  moral  conception  of  the  nature  of  religion, 
and  especially  of  the  nature  of  Christianity  ?  You  don't 
find  these  things  in  old-fashioned  New  l£ngland  Presby- 
terianism :  you  don't  find  them  in  the  school  of  thought 
which  prevailed  both  in  England  and  America  at  the  close 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  Channing  was  in  America, 
and  to  a  large  extent  in  England  too,  himself  the  point  of 
transition  between  them  ;  and  it  was  at  the  feet  of  Chan- 
ning, whether  Parker  knew  it  or  not,  that  he  learnetl  much 
that  made  him  afterward  the  |)ure  and  fervent  and  powerful 
soul  that  he  was.      I  know  nothing  so  shameful   in   the  whole 


444  CHANNINCr    CENTENARY. 

history  oi  vcWy^'nni?.  persecution  as  the  persecution  whicli 
was  raised  against  Parker  for  his  discourse  with  regard  to 
the  "transition"  and  the  "permanent"  in  Christianity. 
There  have  been  persecutions  which  have  raged  more 
fiercely  against  men's  bodies,  there  have  been  persecutions, 
God  knows,  in  the  world,  whose  instruments  were  the  axe, 
the  fagot,  the  stake,  and  the  thumb-screw  ;  but  the  partic- 
ular iniquity  of  this  persecution  was  that  it  was  excited  by 
men  who  themselves  were  bound  to  freedom,  who  them- 
selves were  brand-marked  with  heresy,  and  whose  only  alle- 
gation against  Parker  was  that,  in  the  exercise  of  his  free 
thought,  he  had  gone  a  little  further  than  themselves.  Mr. 
Bright  has  already  said,  and  we  all  know  very  well,  that 
Channing's  views  of  Christianity  were  not  Parker's.  We 
know  that  Parker  said  many  things,  especially  in  the  latter 
part  of  his  life,  which  Channing  perhaps  would  have  heard 
with  unwilling  ears  :  but  you  will  never  make  me  believe 
that  the  older  prophet  did  not  know  what  we  see  when  he 
sent  that  loving  message  to  the  younger ;  you  will  never 
make  me  think  he  did  not  feel  that  he  was  standing  upon 
the  verge  of  a  new  era,  and  that  he  looked  upon  that  era 
with  a  full  confidence  that,  come  what  might,  his  landmarks 
of  religion  were  of  a  kind  that  could  neither  be  submerged 
nor  removed,  and  that  God  would  still  be  holy,  and  human 
nature  worthy,  and  Christ  the  leading  light  of  humanity, 
whatever  might  be  the  result  of  criticism. 

Now,  I  suppose  these  two  young  men  were  equally  dis- 
tinguished by  the  love  of  truth, —  it  is  a  distinguishing  char- 
acteristic of  all  great  prophetic  souls, —  and  I  should  hesitate 
to  say  which  of  them  loved  truth  the  most  faithfully  and  the 
most  urgently ;  but  they  sought  truth  in  very  different  ways. 
I  don't  know  whether  Parker  was  a  great  scholar.  I  do 
know  that  he  was  a  great,  an  omnivorous  reader,  and  a 
mighty  collector  of  books ;  and  I  do  know  that  in  some  cases 


CELEBRATION    AT    LIVERPOOL.  445 

his  writings  bristled  with  quotations  from  all  manner  of  un- 
known authors.  But,  when  you  come  to  Channing's  writings, 
you  find  no  quotations  at  all.  Whatever  learning  he  had 
was  so  amalgamated  with  himself,  so  assimilated  to  the  text- 
ure of  his  mind,  that  it  seemed  only  to  feed  the  natural  foun- 
tain of  thought  as  it  flowed  out  of  his  harmless  soul.  And 
whereas  the  one  man  was  a  wanderer  in  intellectual  regions, 
a  bee  sucking  honey  from  "  every  flower  that  grows,"  so 
the  other  was  a  quiet,  meditative  soul,  rarely  venturing 
beyond  the  precincts  of  his  own  study  or  summer  retreat, 
and  letting  truth,  as  it  shone  upon  him  from  every  quarter 
of  the  heavens,  find  its  way  silently  and  thoughtfully  into  his 
mind  ;  so  that,  whereas  one  man  spoke  hotly,  passionately, 
had  a  word  in  every  controversy,  looked  forward  to  large 
intellectual  and  literary  results,  so  it  was  characteristic  of  the 
other  to  say  nothing  except  upon  emergency,  to  keep  his 
best  work  for  the  pulpit.  And  when  he  spoke,  as  he  some- 
times felt  himself  compelled  to  speak,  upon  other  topics,  and 
addressed  the  whole  literary  world, —  in  the  United  States 
and  in  this  country, —  he  allowed  his  thoughts  to  come  from 
him  carelessly.  And  it  was  this  that  showed  in  a  very 
remarkable  degree  that  Parker  and  Channing  addressed  a 
very  different  order  of  minds.  They  were  both  of  them,  I 
believe,  in  the  essential  sense  of  the  word,  mystics ;  that  is 
to  say,  they  were  men  who  had  the  vision  and  the  faculty 
divine,  and  who  looked  in  God's  face  and  spoke  of  that 
which  they  saw.  They  were  both  of  them  men  of  deep 
individuality.  But  Channing  spoke,  or  speaks,  to  a  very 
large  extent  to  men  who  have  been  under  the  influence  of 
orthodox  views,  to  men  who  wanted  to  shake  off  the  old 
views  of  their  moral  impulsiveness  ;  while  Parker  is  the 
guide  of  those  venturesome  souls  who  are  voyaging  away 
into  the  sunny  seas  of  the  unknown,  hardly  caring,  perhaps, 
to  what    harbor  they  ultimately  arrive.      And    yet  both    of 


44^  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

them  were  anient  servants  of  the  truth,  and  both  of  them 
ready,  if  need  be,  to  lay  down  their  lives  for  truth.  It  is 
a  eharacteristic  difference  between  the  two  men  that,  while 
they  both  were  ardent  lovers  of  Christ,  they  loved  him,  as 
it  were,  with  a  different  species  of  affection.  Channing, 
who  was  almost  of  age  when  the  nineteenth  century  began, 
and  who  therefore  had  got  his  first  training  in  the  very 
different  school  of  thought  which  prevailed  in  the  last  cen- 
tury,—  never  disturbed  much  by  modern  criticism, —  was 
content  to  take  the  Scriptures  as  he  got  them.  Parker, 
on  the  contrary,  was  one  of  the  men  who  welcomed  every 
new  theory  as  it  came  from  England,  a  man  to  whom  noth- 
ing came  amiss,  what  any  man  said  or  thought.  And,  while 
to  Channing,  Christ  was  a  being  above  humanity, —  the  Son 
of  God  made  flesh,  the  image  of  the  Father's  grace  and 
truth,  one  in  whom  he  felt  everything  that  was  best  in 
humanity,  or  reflected  and  carried  up  to  its  highest  degree, 
and  one  to  whom  he  looked  to  inspire  the  strength  of  hu- 
manity in  future  ages,  a  bright  and  beautiful  being,  no  vision 
indeed,  but  a  heavenly  reality, —  to  Parker,  who  hardly  loved 
Christ  less,  if  less  at  all,  he  was  a  carpenter's  son,  a  man 
who  had  gone  about  the  cities  of  Galilee  not  knowing  where 
to  lay  his  head,  one  who  had  mingled  with  the  common 
people  ;  and  who  always  loved  him  better,  as  it  were,  if  he 
might  feel  that  Christ  was  in  truth  a  man  like  ourselves, 
one  born  in  the  midst  of  us,  owning  our  weaknesses  and 
exhibiting  our  possible  strength. 

And  yet  I  would  not  say  that  one  man  loved  his  Master 
less  than  another.  I  do  not  know  where  you  would  go  for 
stronger,  more  devout,  more  affectionate  expression  of  love 
to  the  great  Galilean  Prophet  than  you  can  find  in  Parker's 
works.  So  that,  while  they  both  loved  Christ,  they  loved 
him  in  a  different  fashion.  Comparing  Parker  with  Chan- 
ning in   their  relation  to  the   moral  controversies   of  their 


CELEBRATION  AT  LIVERPOOL.  447 

time,  Mr.  Beard  said  that  they  were  both  men  who  felt  —  as 
such  men  must  feel  —  in  the  very  depths  of  their  nature  the 
iniquity  of  negro  slavery ;  but  whereas  it  was  the  character- 
istic of  Channing  that  he  could  only  speak  well-balanced 
words,  even  if  they  were  words  of  reprobation,  while  it  was 
characteristic  of  him  that  he  must  seek  out  precisely  the 
right  time  to  speak,  and  choose  the  very  words  and  no 
others  which  would  aptly  express  and  weigh  both  sides  of  the 
question,  Parker  went  down  into  the  throng  of  men,  worked 
upon  this  committee,  helped  to  incite  this  rebellion,  took  the 
fugitive  slave  to  his  own  house  and  braved  the  penalties  of 
the  law.  So  while  on  the  one  side  there  was  something 
shrill  and  almost  passionate  in  Parker's  rebuke  of  public 
wrong,  on  the  other  side  men  said  that  Channing  did  not 
speak  soon  enough,  and  spoke  too  softly  when  he  did  speak. 
Perhaps  there  may  be  some  boy  growing  up  among  us  who 
will  have  something  of  Channing's  saintliness  and  some- 
thing of  Parker's  fervor,  and  add  to  both  the  beautiful  philo- 
sophic spirit  of  the  prophet  who  is  yet  among  us.  One 
thing  I  know :  truth  will  never  lack  a  servant,  God  will  never 
be  without  worthy  children,  nor  will  the  Church  in  time  to 
come,  as  in  times  past,  ever  be  barren  of  saints. 

The  Chairman  next  called  upon 

The  Rev.  William  Binns,  who  was  warmly  applauded.  He 
said  :  There  are  eight  Roman  Catholic  saints  whose  memo- 
ries are  celebrated  on  Channing's  birthday ;  and,  putting  his 
theology  on  one  side,  and  looking  at  the  spirit  of  his  life, 
there  are  many  Roman  Catholics  who  would  willingly  accept 
him  as  a  ninth.  And  perhaps  a  liberal  pope,  as  the  develop- 
ment of  doctrine  proceeds,  may  some  time  canonize  him,  not- 
withstanding his  theology.  The  Positivists  certainly  ought 
to  give  Channing  a  place  in  their  calendar.  He  has  a  better 
right  to  be  there  than  many  mere  warriors  who  figure  promi- 
nently in  it,  and  than  some  mythological  personages,  such  as 


44^  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

rromethcus,  Hercules,  and  Orpheus,  whose  very  existence  is 
a  fable  of  the  poets.  Channing  illustrated  Comte's  service 
of  humanity  without  falling  into  Comte's  extravagance  of 
ignoring  God  ;  and  I  would  recommend  the  Liverpool  Posi- 
tivist  Society  to  atone  for  the  deficiency  of  their  master, 
and  to  set  apart  the  7th  of  April  or  the  13th  of  Archimedes 
for  Channing.  Diophantus  possesses  that  day  already,  and 
I  have  no  objection  to  let  him  remain.  Among  the  multi- 
tudes who  claim  the  7th  of  April  as  their  birthday,  as  well 
as  Channing,  there  are  three  who  have  a  near  spiritual  kin- 
ship to  him  :  Wordsworth,  who  represents  the  higher  relig- 
ious aspirations  of  Channing,  in  moods  when  Wordsworth  is 
as  little  of  a  sectarian  Anglican  as  Channing  is  a  sectarian 
Unitarian;  Saint  Francis  Xavier, —  for  Francis  Xavier  was 
a  true  saint,  if  the  world  ever  had  one, —  who  represents 
Channing's  practical  Christian  enthusiasm ;  and  Fourier,  the 
French  philosophical  socialist,  who  represents,  though  in  a 
form  of  chaotic  and  misdirected  science,  Channing's  long- 
ings for  a  Utopian  condition  of  society.  If  Canon  Farrar 
had  been  appointed  to  the  bishopric  of  Liverpool, —  I  mean 
the  bishopric  of  the  second  order,  for  the  bishopric  of  the 
first  order  naturally  belongs  to  the  older  Church, —  he  would 
have  made  some  of  the  characteristics  of  the  Channing 
theology  immensely  popular.  But,  unhappily  for  him  and 
unhappily  for  the  religious  life  of  the  town,  the  publication 
of  Eternal  Hope  made  his  prospects  hopeless.  If  he  had 
vaguely  hinted  at  his  sublime  and  beautiful  heresies,  and  not 
plainly  stated  them,  we  might  have  had  him  here  instead  of 
Dean  Ryle,  and  perhaps  with  us  to-night.  Channing's  soci- 
ology came,  as  everything  good  in  every  man's  case  gen- 
erally does  come,  out  of  his  religion.  Now,  Channing's 
fundamental  religious  ideas  were  three :  first,  God  is  perfect ; 
second,  Jesus  Christ  is  the  true  type  of  a  man  after  God's 
own  heart ;  and,  third,  in  universal  human  nature  there  are 


CELEBRATION  AT  LIVERPOOL.  449 

the  germs  of  this  true  type  of  a  man  after  God's  own  heart. 
I  am  content  for  to-night  to  take  my  stand  on  them.  The 
additions  that  Channing  made  and  the  additions  that  are 
made  by  the  compilers  of  and  behevers  in  elaborate  confes- 
sions of  faith  I  pass  by,  as  not  needed  for  myself  and  as 
destined  to  be  gradually  eliminated  by  the  course  of  history, 
serving  a  purpose  while  they  last,  but  still  being  a  slowly 
dying  cause.  Christian  manhood,  then, —  and  I  include,  of 
course,  womanhood  in  manhood, —  is  the  end  and  aim  for 
which  social  institutions  are  established.  This  is  the  raison 
d'etre.  We  preserve  them  as  they  promote  it,  we  discard 
them  as  they  hinder  it,  and  we  modify  them  as  we  get 
clearer  views  of  what  is  required  by  the  ever-unfolding 
capacities  of  mankind.  In  the  animating  spirit  of  these 
ideas,  Channing  bravely  faced  the  problems  of  the  time. 
To  begin  with,  they  made  short  work  of  his  early  Calvinism, 
and  emancipated  him  into  the  glorious  liberty  of  the  chil- 
dren of  God.  With  the  various  social  activities  that  they 
prompted  him  to  undertake,  I  find  myself  substantially  at 
one,  and  with  the  political  activities,  too ;  for  politics  is  but 
a  minor  section  of  the  larger  sphere  of  sociology.  So  he 
condemned  slavery  in  days  when  all  the  respectabilities 
defended  it,  and  when  all  the  pieties,  except  honest  Quaker 
piety,  said,  "Let  it  alone."  It  always  seems  to  me  a  mel- 
ancholy thing,  and  an  illustration  of  the  perverting  influence 
which  the  possession  of  irresponsible,  absolute  power  exer- 
cises over  the  conscience  and  the  conduct  of  even  good  men, 
that  the  American  people,  while  asserting  their  own  liberty 
and  shedding  their  blood  in  lavish  streams  to  win  it,  did  not 
sooner  realize  that  in  an  equitable  government,  fashioned 
after  divine  models,  liberty  is  just  as  much  the  birthright 
of  the  blacks  as  of  the  whites.  They,  however,  took  refuge 
in  a  policy  of  short-sighted  utilitarianism.  I  say  short- 
sighted,  because,   in    the    long   run,    utilitarianism    ends    in 

30 


450  CIIANNING    CKNTKNAKY. 

morality,  which  docs  right  for  right's  sake,  and  docs  not 
consider  utility.  Utility  goes  without  the  saying.  Right- 
eousness is  the  guarantee  of  the  only  utility  worth  caring 
for.  Channing  did  not  live  to  see  the  triumph  of  his  prin- 
ciples. That  triumph  had  to  be  achieved  by  war.  It  was 
evolved  as  a  providential  consequence  of  mixed  human  pur- 
poses. Liberty  is  an  inspired  saying.  But  the  Americans 
found  out  the  truth  of  Tennyson's  words,  that  it  is 

"  A  saying  hard  to  shape  in  act ; 
For  all  the  past  of  time  reveals 
A  bridal  dawn  of  thunder-peals, 
Whenever  Thought  has  wedded  Fact." 

The  American  thunder-peals  purified  the  air,  and  set  the 
people  free.  Channing  was  a  republican ;  and  hereditary 
privileges  were  alien  to  his  generous  and  freedom-loving 
soul.  In  England,  we  are  not  as  yet,  except  in  a  few  cases, 
educated  up  to  the  level  of  this  lofty  ideal  of  statesmanship. 
His  political  doctrines,  therefore,  run  counter  to  some  of 
our  prejudices;  and  I  should  not  have  mentioned  them,  if 
justice  to  him  would  have  allowed  me  to  keep  silence.  But 
we  want  to  grasp  him  in  his  completeness ;  and  this  repub- 
licanism is  an  essential  element  of  his  sociology.  For  prac- 
tical purposes,  we  no  doubt  possess  most  of  the  advantages 
of  republicanism ;  and  it  may  be  that  our  nearly  real  repub- 
licanism works  about  as  well  as  the  nominal  combined  with 
the  real  republicanism  of  America  works.  But  old  forms 
unfortunately  tend  now  and  then  to  reassert  themselves  as 
living  forces.  That  is  their  nature.  And  I  look  upon  Chan- 
ning as  a  prophet  of  the  good  time  coming, —  when  effete 
forms,  also,  will  disappear;  when  there  will  be  no  hereditary 
privileges;  when  the  position  of  men  and  women  will  be 
determined  by  what  they  are,  and  not  fixed  beforehand  by 
what  their  parents  were,  irrespective  of  their  own  present 
fitness ;  when,  in  simple  parlance,  every  tub  will  stand  on  its 


CELEBRATION  AT  LIVERPOOL.  45  I 

own  bottom.  There  is  no  need  to  hurry  any  changes  in 
England.  But  it  is  evident  that  the  social  organism  is 
working  its  way  onward  by  natural  and  inevitable  processes 
of  development,  and  the  future  will  be  republican.  Chan- 
ning  was  a  peace  man,  not  a  pqace-at-any-price  man  ;  for  he 
believed,  and  I  believe,  in  war  sometimes  as  a  bitter  neces- 
sity,—  war  for  justice,  war  for  liberty,  war  for  the  right  to 
live  and  grow  to  the  full  stature  of  humanity, —  and  death 
before  slavery  and  dishonor.  I  have  no  inclination  to  aban- 
don the  world  to  the  dominion  of  strong  wickedness.  The 
tender  mercies  of  the  wicked  are  cruel.  I  hold,  with  Milton, 
that  a  man  must  be  willing  to  defend  his  country  with  the 
pen  or  the  sword,  as  need  may  be.     And 

"  How  can  man  die  better 
Than  facing  fearful  odds, 
For  the  ashes  of  his  fathers 
And  the  temples  of  his  gods  ? " 

But,  notwithstanding  this  warlike  preamble,  I,  too,  am  a 
peace  man  ;  and  I  candidly  confess  that  I  do  not  know  of 
a  single  war  in  which  we  have  been  engaged,  since  the 
defeat  of  the  Spanish  Armada,  which  might  not  have  been 
avoided  by  wise  and  Christian  statesmanship,  by  a  display  of 
that  scientific  diplomacy  of  which  we  hear  so  much  and  see 
so  little.  England  has  still  more  faith  in  power  than,  in 
righteousness,  and  is  too  ready  to  appeal  to  the  arbitrament 
of  arms  instead  of  the  arbitrament  of  the  conscience  of  the 
world,  and  to  show  at  the  same  time  there  is  power  enough 
at  the  back  which  we  will  call  into  play  when  peaceful  pro- 
posals, pressed  with  an  almost  but  not  quite  everlasting 
patience,  have  failed.  A  general  reduction  of  armies  and 
navies,  a  discouragement  of  the  war  spirit,  a  ceasing"  to 
confer  honors  on  the  fighting  ruffian  athletes  of  the  Lord 
William  Beresford  stamp,  the  establishment  of  courts  of 
international  arbitration,  whose  decisions  shall   be  enforced 


.|;j  CHANNINO    CKNTr.NARV. 

by  the  omnipotent  international  [lower, —  this  was  Chan- 
ninij^'s  ideal,  and  to  this  the  peoples  will  yet  bring  their  gov- 
ernments. God  grant  it  may  be  soon  :  it  is  weary  waiting. 
Channing  believed  in  free  churches.  So  do  most  of  us. 
Else  wherefore  are  we  here  .''  "  An  Established  Church," 
said  he.  "is  the  grave  of  intellect."  And  I  see  no  possibility 
of  answering  that  statement  satisfactorily.  The  Church  of 
England  itself  furnishes  at  once  the  best  and  the  saddest 
commentary  that  we  could  desire.  I  admit  with  glad  grati- 
tude the  number  of  eminent  men  who  have  adorned  it.  I 
remember  Anselm's  acute  metaphysical  intellect  ;  I  remem- 
ber Jeremy  Taylor,  the  Shakspeare  of  divines ;  I  remember 
Hooker,  with  his  Ecclesiastical  Polity,  so  much  broader  than 
Cartwright's  Puritan  scheme  ;  I  remember  Tillotson's  latitu- 
dinarianism ;  I  remember  Bishop  Butler,  with  the  Analogy 
of  Religion,  so  splendid  in  its  first  part  and  so  halting  in  its 
second  ;  I  remember  Dean  Stanley,  with  his  all-embracing 
geniality  and  charity, —  I  remember  them  all;  and,  whether  I 
agree  with  them  or  disagree  with  them,  I  am  proud  of  them. 
But  they  have  one  drawback;  and,  in  my  mind,  that  hampers 
and  mutilates  them  from  Anselm  to  Dean  Stanley,  hampers 
and  mutilates  the  laity  as  well  as  the  clergy.  They  are 
not  free.  Their  thinking  is  bound  to  reach  certain  con- 
clusions. Or,  if  they  reach  conclusions  not  in  harmony 
with  the  plain  meaning  of  the  standards,  they  must  either 
play  tricks  with  words  or  seek  a  new  home ;  and  I  feel, 
therefore,  that  if,  when  limited  by  creeds,  they  are  able  to 
do  so  well,  they  would  be  able  to  do  vastly  better,  if  they 
threw  their  creeds  simply  to  fly  in  the  winds  as  temporary 
flags,  and  did  not  inscribe  upon  them  an  inglorious  semper 
eadem.  Now,  Channing  would  not  have  his  own  creed 
established,  nor  would  he  have  ours  so  doomed  to  be  stereo- 
typed. Let  theology  be  as  science  is,  open  to  new  revela- 
tions ;  and  let  it  throw  aside  old  forms  and  old  symbols  of 


CELEBRATION  AT  LIVERPOOL.  453 

speech,  as  it  presses  into  an  ampler  ether  and  a  diviner  air. 
And  to  this  complexion,  too,  England  will  come  at  last. 
Channing  believed  in  woman.  So,  again,  do  we  all.  But 
there  are  three  ways  of  believing  in  woman.  We  may  believe 
in  her  as  a  creature  made  for  us  to  hold  as  a  chattel,  which 
belief  we  have  outgrown  ;  or  as  a  creature  to  be  protected 
and  cared  for  by  the  superior  lords  of  creation,  which  belief 
is  still  the  prevailing  superstition  ;  or  as  a  creature  not  only 
to  be  protected  and  cared  for,  but  possessing  the  same 
rights  as  ourselves  to  the  full  development  of  all  her  natural 
faculties,  which  belief  some  of  us  have  attained,  and  more 
vaguely  sympathize  with,  and  all  are  destined  to.  This  last 
form  of  belief  was  Channing's.  What  does  it  involve  ?  It 
involves  a  higher  education  of  women,  and  by  means  of  high 
schools  and  an  extension  of  university  opportunities  we  are 
slowly  moving  in  the  right  direction.  But,  when  we  have 
given  a  higher  education  to  woman,  there  will  be  little  use  in 
it :  it  will  simply  rust  in  her,  if  we  do  not  frankly  open  to 
her  the  various  professions.  And  here  men,  in  spite  of 
their  politeness,  are  often  tyrannical,  jealous,  and  selfish. 
Doctors  protest,  lawyers  protest,  parsons  protest  this,  that, 
and  the  other  is  not  her  sphere.  I  protest  in  my  turn 
against  them  all.  Let  woman  choose  her  own  sphere. 
She  cannot  make  a  greater  mess  of  things  than  many  male 
doctors,  lawyers,  and  parsons  make  already ;  and  the 
chances  are  that  she  would  often  do  very  much  better. 
And,  to  crown  all,  give  her  the  legal  right  to  the  fran- 
chise, and  to  more  control  over  the  joint  property  and  the 
personal  property,  and  so  in  harmony  with  Channing's 
ideal,  though  I  do  not  know  that  he  ever  formulated  it  in 
this  way,  bring  law  up  to  the  demands  of  morality.  This 
revolution  will  come  to  pass  also. 

Finally,  Channing  believed  in  the  elevation  of  the   social 
condition    of   the    working   classes.     He    sympathized    with 


434  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

some  of  the  ends  that  Fourier  and  Robert  Owen  set  before 
themselves,  fie  did  not,  of  course,  sanction  Fourier's  me- 
chanical arrangements  ;  and  still  less  did  he  fall  in  with 
Owen's  parallelograms  and  community  of  property  and  doc- 
trine of  circumstances.  But  he  felt  the  startling  anomaly 
in  a  Christian  country  of  so  many  poor  in  the  face  of  a  hand- 
ful of  the  rich.  America,  to  its  discredit,  has  no  poor  laws. 
Channing  insisted  that  it  was  the  duty  of  a  State  to  care  for 
its  poorer  citizens,  to  educate  them,  and  to  protect  them  in 
sickness  and  old  age.  He  constantly  urged  on  the  rich  their 
moral  obligations  in  this  matter,  and  was  prepared  to  make 
sweeping  reforms  of  a  legal  kind  in  relation  to  land  and  other 
property.  But,  and  what  is  always  of  supreme  importance, 
he  clearly  saw  that  no  laws,  no  elaborate,  artificial,  social 
arrangements  could  of  themselves  destroy  our  social  evils. 
Only  to  the  elevation  of  the  personal  character  can  we  look 
for  the  permanent  elevation  of  the  whole  social  system. 
Temperance,  industry,  economy,  self-control,  morality,  relig- 
ion, are  the  genuine  levers  to  raise  humanity.  He  was  a 
socialist ;  but  he  preserved  the  sanctity  of  the  individual  and 
the  home,  and  made  personal  and  family  life  the  basis  of 
national  prosperity  and  social  progress.  There  is  one  as- 
pect of  Channing's  theology  on  which  I  must  say  a  conclud- 
ing word.  He  has  exercised  a  wide  and  healthy  influence 
over  the  old-fashioned  methods  of  theological  thinking,  and 
that  influence  is  still  growing  from  year  to  year.  Perhaps 
it  is  owing  less  to  his  power  as  a  thinker  than  to  his  moral 
and  spiritual  earnestness  as  a  man.  It  was  also  moral  and 
spiritual  earnestness  that  made  him  a  iieretic  himself  to 
begin  with,  and  compelled  him  in  very  fidelity  to  his  own 
best  instincts  to  believe  in  a  potential  divinity  of  human 
nature  in  spite  of  its  waywardness  and  sin,  and  to  reinter- 
pret the  work  of  Christ  as  a  quickening  agency  rather  than 
a  legal  satisfaction,  and  to  assert  the  ultimate  victory  of  God 


CELEBRATION  AT  LIVERPOOL.  455 

in  harmony  with  the  freedom  of  God's  children,  over  against 
the  prevailing  notion  of  a  disastrous  and  deplorable  break- 
down, in  which  the  devil,  and  not  God,  gets  the  better  in 
the  great  conflict  between  good  and  evil.  And  Channing's 
ideas  on  these  matters  now  find  multitudinous  expression  in 
the  pulpit  and  the  press,  on  the  part  ■  of  men  who  differ 
from  him  on  the  Trinity,  and  still  cling  to  the  Incarnation 
as  the  cardinal  truth  of  Christianity.  But  he  has  weaned 
them  from  the  idolatry  of  creeds ;  and  they  no  longer,  to 
anything  like  the  same  extent,  hold  that  their  own  little 
cluster  of  dogmas  constitute  the  sole  way  to  heaven.  They 
gladly  reckon  themselves  members  of  a  universal  church  ; 
and  the  ancient  anathemas,  that  consistency  seems  to  re- 
quire, they  only  utter  from  the  lips  outward,  and  take  care 
to  explain  the  meaning  away.  Channing's  unique  spiritual 
personality  has  made  a  breach  in  the  citadel  of  bigotry. 
Through  him,  we  can  see,  rising  in  the  midst  of  the  east 
orthodox  world,  a  new  temple  for  a  new  faith,  lofty  as  is 
the  love  of  God,  and  ample  as  the  wants  of  man.  I  have 
now,  from  my  own  stand-point,  briefly  sketched  some  of 
the  phases  of  Channing's  manifold  activity.  You  may  not 
agree  with  all  the  details  of  his  views ;  but,  like  me,  I  am 
sure  that  you  will  bow  before  his  spirit.  I  say  that  as  a 
free  and  catholic  religionist,  as  an  enemy  of  slavery,  as  a 
republican,  as  a  friend  of  peace,  as  a  believer  in  free  churches, 
as  an  advocate  of  the  equal  rights  of  man  and  woman,  as  a 
servant  of  God  and  the  people,  he  was  a  hero  in  his  own 
country  and  a  saint  worthy  of  the  worship  of  mankind. 

Upon  the  motion  of  Mr.  Henry  Jevons,  a  vote  of  thanks 
was  passed  to  the  Chairman,  and  the  proceedings  afterward 
terminated. 


THE  CELEBRATION  AT  MANCHESTER. 


A  SOIREE  and  public  meeting  was  held  in  the  New  Town 
Hall,  Albert  Square,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Manchester 
District  Unitarian  Association,  to  celebrate  the  birth  of  Dr. 
Channing.  There  was  a  very  large  gathering.  On  the  even- 
ing previous,  near  one  thousand  tickets  had  been  sold. 
There  was  a  most  brilliant  assembly.  The  Mayor's  magnifi- 
cent suite  of  rooms  was  thrown  open  for  the  accommodation 
of  our  friends.  Tea  was  served  in  the  tea-room,  where  every- 
body appeared  to  have  their  wants  bountifully  supplied. 
About  twenty  minutes  to  seven  o'clock,  Mr.  J.  Kendrick 
Pyne  began  the  organ  performance,  giving  as  his  first  piece 
a  concert  fantasia  from  Sir  R.  Stewart.  This  was  followed 
by  a  Bourree  (B)  from  Macfarren,  which  was  succeeded  by 
the  overture  from  "William  Tell."  There  were  present 
Alderman  C.  S.  Grundy,  ex-Mayor  of  Manchester,  who 
occupied  the  chair ;  the  Rev.  Charles  T.  Poynting,  B.A., 
and  Mr.  John  Dendy,  Jr.,  joint  Secretaries  of  the  Associa- 
tion ;  the  Revs.  Charles  Wicksteed,  B.A.,  William  Gaskell, 
M.A.,  James  Black,  M.A.,  Joseph  Freeston,  P.  M.  Hig- 
ginson,  M.A.,  T.  Lloyd  Jones,  W.  M.  Ainsworth,  J.  T.  Mar- 
riott, C.  C.  Coe,  D.  Walmsley,  B.A.,  Noah  Green,  S.  A. 
Steinthal,  J.  B.  Lloyd,  Benjamin  Walker,  Richard  Pilcher, 
B.A.,  J.  Harrop,  William  Mitchell,  Silas  Farrington,  E.  W. 


CELEBRATION  AT  MANCHESTER.  457 

Hopkinson,  John  Moore,  James  Harwood,  B.A.,  John  Mc- 
Dowell, George  Ride,  F.  H.  Jones,  B.A.,  J.  K.  Smith,  W. 
Mellor,  H.  Thomas,  W.  C.  Squier,  J.  Perry,  B.A.,  J.  G. 
Slater ;  Messrs.  E.  H.  Greg  (Styal),  Smith  Golland,  G.  W.  R. 
Wood,  treasurer  of  the  District  Association,  Robert  Nichol- 
son, Henry  Leigh,  E.  Winser,  Jesse  Pilcher,  E.  C.  Harding, 
J.  Barrow  (Bolton),  J.  Barrow  (Styal),  John  Heys,  John 
Dendy,  Sen.,  John  Thomas,  Richard  Wade,  H.  J.  Leppoc, 
Z.  Smith,  Henry  Coffey,  O.  Oldham,  Alexander  Ireland, 
Archibald  Winterbottom,  W.  H.  Herford,  B.A.,  H.  Long, 
T.  H.  Baker,  F.  Holland,  F.  Monks  (Warrington),  Councillor 
H.  Baily,  W.  Horrocks,  W.  H.  Talbot  (Deputy  Town  Clerk), 
J.  Bellhouse,  James  D.  Oliver,  Richard  Peacock,  Thomas 
Swan  wick,  Thomas  Rawson ;  and  Colonel  Shaw  (U.S.A. 
Consul),  Dr.  Roscoe,  and  Dr.  John  Watts. 

After  an  eloquent  introductory  speech  by  the  Chairman, 
Alderman  C.  S.  Grundy,  which  was  heartily  applauded,  the  fol- 
lowing eulogy  was  pronounced  by  the  Rev.  Charles  Wicksteed. 

Mr.  Wicksteed  said :  A  hundred  years  ago  this  day 
week,  a  New  England  household  received  from  all-bounteous 
Heaven  the  gift  of  an  infant-life,  the  growing  light  of 
whose  purity,  nobility,  and  goodness,  —  after  irradiating 
home,  school,  college,  church,  country,  and  touching  at 
length  the  four  corners  of  the  earth, —  we  are  met  this  day 
to  declare,  with  gratitude,  shines  still.  Sprung  from  John 
Channing,  a  Dorsetshire  man  of  Old  England,  the  first  of 
the  name  that  came  to  America,  the  subject  of  our  eulogy 
to-day  had  the  inherited  advantage  of  some  of  the  best  cult- 
ure and  opportunity  of  his  country  ;  and,  as  we  go  back 
through  the  intermediate  generations  between  himself  and 
his  English  ancestors,  we  find  among  them,  and  among  the 
American  families  with  whom  marriage  allied  them,  the 
merchant,  the  physician,  the  lawyer,  the  member  of  Con- 
gress, the  chief  justice,  and  the  office-bearer  of  State. 


45S  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

His  father,  who  had  graduated  at  Princeton  College,  in 
New  Jersey,  became  eminent  as  a  pleader  at  the  bar, 
and  was  made  Attorney-General  of  his  native  State.  Of 
a  winning  countenance  and  deportment,  the  law  of  kind- 
ness was  in  his  heart  and  on  his  tongue.  He  was  an 
obedient  son,  and  a  conscientiously  good,  if  somewhat  dis- 
tant, father.  Keenly  feeling  the  distresses  of  mankind, 
and  a  generous  reliever  of  them,  his  munificence  was  ever 
accompanied  by  a  sweetness  in  the  manner  which  doubled 
the  obligation  of  gratitude.  While  a  warm  asscrter  of  the 
rights  of  man,  he  was  a  lover  of  peace  and  order;  and 
though  in  religious  profession  particularly  attached  to  the 
Congregational  denomination,  and  to  the  ministry  of  his 
devout  and  learned  pastor,  Dr.  Styles,  he  treated  all  good 
men  of  all  denominations  with  kindness  and  respect. 

This  admirable  father  Channing  lost  when  he  was  thir- 
teen years  of  age.  His  mother,  Lucy  Ellery,  was  spared 
to  him  for  more  than  fifty  years  after  his  birth.  A  disci- 
plinarian in  her  family,  and  a  woman  of  energy  and  judg- 
ment, she  yet  united  with  these  qualities  a  tenderness  of 
sensibility  and  an  enthusiasm,  which  threw  a  charm  of 
romance  over  her  conversation  and  her  actions.  Feelings 
quick,  humor  lively,  she  so  clothed  sagacious  thought  in 
quaint  dialect  that  she  was  as  entertainhig  a  companion 
as  she  was  a  wise  counsellor.  To  her  son  (he  himself  said), 
the  most  remarkable  trait  in  her  character  was  the  rectitude 
and  simplicity  of  her  mind.  Perhaps,  he  says,  I  have  never 
known  her  equal  in  this  respect.  She  had  the  firmness 
to  see  the  truth,  to  speak  it,  to  act  upon  it ;  and  in  my  long 
intercourse  with  her  I  cannot  recall  one  word  or  action 
betraying  the  slightest  insincerity.  She  had  keen  insight, 
she  was  not  to  be  imposed  upon  by  others,  and,  what  is 
rarer,  she  practised  no  imposition  in  her  own  mind. 

In  attempting  to  describe  and  to  trace  the  mental  and 


CELEBRATION  AT  MANCHESTER.  459 

spiritual  career  of  Dr.  Channing,  it  would  be  at  once  irrev- 
erent and  ungrateful  to  the  past,  and  incomplete  as  regards 
what  followed,  not  most  distinctly  to  mark  these  powerful 
factors  in  the  product.  For  in  this,  as  in  all  cases,  inherited 
quality,  with  the  formative  surroundings  which  it  involves, 
is  the  one  thing,  more  than  any  other,  which  makes  the 
man.  At  this  moment  there  is  no  more  solemn  fact  weigh- 
ing on  the  conscience  of  mankind  than  this  law  of  hered- 
ity; and  of  the  two  laws  of  succession,  the  one  to  property 
and  the  other  to  quality,  the  law  of  succession  to  special 
characteristics  of  body,  mind,  conscience,  and  character, 
is  even  the  more  uniform  and  certainly  the  more  momentous 
in  its  operation,  of  the  two. 

This,  indeed,  is  not  the  place  or  the  occasion  to  enlarge 
on  the  wide  influence  which  this  fact  has  on  all  human 
life,  on  the  responsibility  in  which  it  involves  every 
parent  in  the  universe,  or  the  weight  it  brings  to  bear  on 
the  conscience,  and  the  motive-power  it  supplies  to  self- 
culture  and  the  formation  of  character  and  habits  through- 
out society. 

Suffice  it  that  Channing  himself  believed  in  the  power  of 
this  heredity  in  his  own  case, —  that  he  traced  to  the  virtues 
of  his  parents  his  own,  to  their  high  principles  his  prin- 
ciples ;  and  that  he  believed,  as  he  said,  that  the  best  part  of 
himself  came  from  them,  and  from  the  moral  atmosphere 
they  caused  him  to  breathe  from  the  first. 

Inherited  elements,  however,  never  reappear  in  the  same 
combination  and  proportion  in  successive  generations,  but 
always  so  vary  as  to  form  a  new  individuality,  quite  distinct 
from  every  other  individuality  that  ever  existed  or  ever  will 
exist ;  and  that  individuality  always  adds  to  the  result  some- 
thing of  its  own,  something  apparently  original  to  itself. 
And  while  we  trace  the  high  and  direct  aim,  the  conscien- 
tiousness, the  brain  power,  and  the  severe  purity  in  the  char- 


460  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

actcr  of  Channing  to  this  heredity,  the  sensitiveness,  the 
aspiration,  the  severity  of  self-discipline,  and  the  spirituality 
that  belonged  to  him,  we  must  trace  directly  to  himself,  as 
the  product  of  his  own  will,  working  on  the  inherited  qual- 
ities, and  moulding  them  into  fresh  and  higher  forms  ;  and 
also  must  we  not,  and  ought  we  not,  to  add,  to  some  direct 
inspiration  of  heaven,  some  personal  descent  and  gift  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  on  his  soul,  descending  upon  him  in  resjDonse 
to  the  constant  cry  of  his  own  heart,  and  his  own  daily 
effort  to  climb  the  Mount  of  God  ? 

The  result  of  these  influences  and  all  this  earnest  seeking 
was  a  rare  and  unique  personality,  some  leading  features  of 
which  we  shall  endeavor  to  portray  as  we  proceed. 

But  we  must  not  suppose  that  the  external  circumstances 
which  helped  to  make  him  were  exhausted  by,  though  they 
might  be  involved  in,  the  immediate  heredity  of  constitution 
and  of  home.  External  Nature  herself  had  a  hand  in  him. 
The  very  situation  of  the  place  of  his  birth,  Newport,  Rhode 
Island,  he  himself  declares  "had  no  small  influence  in  de- 
termining his  mode  of  thought  and  habits  of  life."  More 
even  than  the  fresh  green  pastures  on  the  north  side  of 
Newport,  with  the  ever-varying  cloud  scenery,  and  softness 
of  the  atmosphere,  and  the  reflected  light  of  surrounding 
bay  and  ocean,  was  to  him  the  pebbly,  shelly  shore  on  the 
south,  wath  its  gorgeous  bivalves,  its  shelving  sands,  its 
precipitous  rocks,  the  almost  perennial  roar  of  the  waves, 
and  the  deep-riven  rent,  which  formed  part  of  that  stern  and 
rock-bound  coast 

"  Where  the  band  of  pilgrims  moored  their  bark, 
On  the  wild  New  England  shore. 

"No  spot  on  earth,"  says  Channing,  "has  helped  to  form  me 
so  much  as  that  beach.  There  I  lifted  up  my  voice  in  praise 
amidst  the  tempest.     There,  softened  by  beauty,  I  poured 


CELEBRATION  AT  MANCHESTER.  461 

out  ray  thanksgivings  and  confessions.  There,  in  reveren- 
tial sympathy  with  the  mighty  power  around  me,  I  became 
conscious  of  power  within.  There,  strugghng  thoughts  and 
emotions  broke  forth,  as  if  moved  to  utterance  by  nature's 
eloquence  of  winds  and  waves.  There  began  a  happiness 
surpassing  all  worldly  pleasure,  as  all  gifts  of  fortune, —  the 
happiness  of  communing  with  the  works  of  God." 

One  characteristic  incident  of  his  boyhood,  and  one  alone, 
need  we  pause  to  describe ;  and,  though  it  has  been  often  re- 
ferred to  and  is  perhaps  better  known  than  anything  else 
recorded  of  his  childhood  and  youth,  it  would  be  a  culpable 
incompleteness  in  us  now  to  omit  it.  His  father  took  him 
to  hear  a  celebrated  preacher,  from  whom  the  boy, 

"  With  his  wonder  so  intense, 
And  his  small  experience," 

"  thought  that  he  should  learn  great  tidings  from  the  unseen 
world."  He  heard,  however,  the  usual  Calvinism  of  the 
time, —  the  decrees,  the  curse,  the  darkness,  and  the  horror. 
The  boy  felt  that  all  amusement  and  earthly  business  must 
now  be  abandoned,  and  all  people  must  set  themselves  to 
flee,  and  to  help  others  to  flee,  from  the  wrath  to  come. 
"  Sound  doctrine,  sir,"  said  his  father  to  some  person  after 
the  service.  "  It  is  all  true,  then,"  said  the  boy  to  himself. 
His  father  whistled  as  they  drove  along,  and  when  he 
reached  home  took  off  his  boots,  put  his  feet  upon  the  man- 
tel-piece, and  quietly  read  his  newspaper.  "  It  is  all  untrue," 
now  said  the  boy  to  himself.  He  had  been,  he  thought,  the 
victim  of  a  lie;  and  from  that  moment  he  rose  in  freedom 
into  the  air  of  heaven  to  seek  God  for  himself. 

And  now  nothing  will  arrest  the  rapidity  of  our  progress 
through  his  boyhood  and  early  youth.  He  read  in  the  pul)- 
lic  library,  and  went  to  the  town  school  which  New  England 
Puritanism  provided  everywhere,  that,  as  it  was  said,  "  bar- 


462  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

harisni  "  nui;hL  not  prevail  in  their  families ;  and  at  last  to 
Harvanl  College,  aided  by  the  same  power,  that,  as  it  said, 
"learning-  might  not  be  buried  in  the  graves  of  our  an- 
cestors." 

Here,  at  college,  the  thoughtful,  pensive  boy  pursued  his 
silent  and  almost  solitary  walk  among  the  grave  moralities 
and  still  graver  theologies  of  his  time,  and  scarce  a  trace 
remains  of  the  more  cheerful  and  refreshing  culture  of  the 
humaner  letters.  Living  influences  and  powers  seem  to 
have  laid  no  hold  of  him,  or  special  academic  studies  drawn 
his  heart.  As  has  been  well  said,  "the  intensity  of  the  moral 
sentiment  within  him  absorbed  everything  into  itself,  made 
his  reflected  activity  wholly  predominate  over  the  apprehen- 
sive, and  determined  it  in  one  invariable  direction.  He  med- 
itated where  others  would  have  learned ;  and  the  materials  of 
his  knowledge  disappeared  as  fast  as  they  were  given,  in  the 
large  generalizations  of  his  faith.  His  mind  thus  grew, 
while  his  attainments  made  no  show;  and,  while  he  missed 
the  praise  of  learning,  he  had  an  affluence  of  wisdom." 

College  friendships,  few  but  choice  and  lasting,  college 
discussions,  readings,  and  debates,  a  knowledge  of  the  lead- 
ing standard  English  divines,  and  of  a  few  moral  philoso- 
phers, especially  Ferguson,  he  took  away  with  him  indeed ; 
but  the  fabric  of  his  mind  was  self-reared,  steady  alike  amid 
the  black  thunder  of  Calvinism  and  the  encroaching  waves 
of  utter  overthrow  and  unbelief.  It  was  quite  true  what  he 
himself  said,  "  It  is  easy  to  read,  hard  to  think "  ;  and  he 
chiefly  applied  himself  to  the  harder  task.  From  college,  he 
went  to  Richmond  in  Virginia ;  and  here  we  encounter  the 
greatest  probably  of  the  formative  influences  of  his  youth 
and  early  manhood.  He  was  tutor  to  a  dozen  boys,  and 
stayed  there  a  year  and  a  half.  Not  insensible  to  the  grace 
and  charms  of  Southern  life  and  society,  when  he  looked 
down  into  the  crater  on  which  it  rested,  his  soul  was  filled 


CELEBRATION  AT  MANCHESTER.  463 

with  horror,  and  the  foundation  of  his  hatred  to  slavery  was 
laid.  Retiring  also  into  himself  from  society,  the  tone  of 
which  offended  his  Northern  Puritanism  and  principle,  he 
spent  much  of  his  time  in  solitary  musing.  "I  lived  alone," 
he  says,  "too  poor  to  buy  books,  spending  my  days  and 
nights  in  an  out-building,  with  no  one  beneath  my  roof  ex- 
cept during  the  hours  of  school-keeping.  There  I  toiled  as 
I  have  never  done  since,  for  gradually  my  constitution  sunk 
under  the  unremitting  exertion."  Partly  from  a  youthful 
stoical  enthusiasm,  not  uncommon,  leading  him  into  the 
practice  of  asceticism  from  principle,  and  partly  in  order  not 
to  use  the  money  with  which  his  mother  had  supplied  him, 
but  which  he  thought  she  herself  might  want,  he  deprived 
himself  of  necessary  food  and  rest  and  raiment,  became  in 
consequence  shyer  and  shyer  of  all  human  intercourse, — 
musing,  meditating,  introspecting,  and  self-reproaching, — 
going,  in  fact,  through  all  the  experience  so  well  known  in 
the  history  of  our  race  as  the  discipline  of  the  saint,  till  his 
body  became  a  skeleton,  and  his  mind  a  laboratory  of  mor- 
bid thought,  but  also  of  something  better  than  morbid 
thought.  He  thus  sowed  indeed  the  seeds  of  the  weakness 
and  disease  which  never  left  him ;  and  many  have  thought 
that  this  painful  discipline  was  an  utter  mistake  and  wrong, 
not  only  to  himself,  but  to  society,  disabling  him  from  nobler 
toils  and  a  greater  service  the  remainder  of  his  life.  But  I 
am  not  so  sure  of  this.  It  was  after  all  part  of  the  making 
of  an  exceptional  man.  Health  of  body,  easy  circumstances, 
and  peace  of  mind  are  not  usually  the  parents  of  excep- 
tional excellence.  Had  Johnson  been  a  comfortable  gentle- 
man-commoner at  Oxford,  with  good  health  and  competence, 
enabling  him  to  engage  in  the  society  and  amusement  of  the 
place  instead  of  a  servitor  in  poverty  and  neglect,  and  with 
a  bad  constitution  that  drove  him  into  solitary  ways  and 
studies,  are  we  sure  we  should  have  had  the  great  lexicog- 


464  CHANNING   CENTENARY. 

raphcr  and  moralist  ?  Who  would  assert  that,  if  Prescott 
had  not  lost  his  sight,  he  would  have  produced  a  better  his- 
tory ?  Still  less,  who  will  say,  except  out  of  poverty  and 
obscurity  and  blindness,  that  Milton  would  have  risen  into 
himself,  especially  after  his  pathetic  lament  of  "knowledge 
at  one  entrance  quite  shut  out,"  and  the  inspired  prayer, 
"  So  much  the  rather.  Thou  !  celestial  light,  shine  inward  "  ? 

Even  in  common  life,  how  often  do  we  find  that  broken 
health,  adverse  circumstances,  and  disappointment  of  vainly 
cherished  hopes  have  driven  a  man,  in  spite  of  himself,  into 
his  higher  usefulness,  and  therefore  his  higher  happiness ! 
And  so  in  self-abnegation  and  self-mortification  of  the  saint, 
in  the  subordination  of  the  physical  energies  and  the  pas- 
sions to  the  struggle  for  a  purity  more  than  human,  and  ap- 
proaching the  divine,  who  shall  say  that  the  special  loftiness 
and  the  highest  spirituality  of  a  man  do  not  take  their  rise  ? 
The  psychology  of  saintship  is  as  yet  unsettled, —  nay,  an  al- 
most unexplored,  unstudied  branch  of  knowledge.  All,  as 
far  as  I  know,  that  we  have  arrived  at  is  this  :  that  the  most 
spiritual  states  and  the  loftiest  visions  that  humanity  h^s 
yet  reached  have  been  in  actual  connection  more  or  less 
with  these  very  conditions  of  what  we  call  morbid  asceticism 
and  sense  mortification.  And  the  fact  in  our  own  day,  that 
practical  and  sensible  people,  and  people  of  the  world,  find 
in  such  a  book  as  the  Christian  Year  a  response  to  the  cry  of 
some  higher  inner  nature,  and  a  nutriment  for  it,  indicates 
the  deep  natural  correspondences  there  are  between  the 
spiritual  perfection  born  of  the  abnegation  of  the  saint  and 
the  common  run  of  our  humanity. 

The  scanty  food,  the  sleeping  on  the  floor,  the  shivering 
in  thin,  threadbare  clothes  in  the  winter  frost  were  no  artifi- 
cial regimen  to  Channing.  These  things  were  the  product 
of  a  deep  yearning.  They  were  the  honest  outcome  of  his 
own  nature.      His  own   nature  led  him  to   them,   his  own 


CELEBRATION  AT  MANCHESTER.  465 

sense  of  duty  urged  him  to  them.  They  were  the  instru- 
ments, as  he  conceived,  of  his  near  entrance  into  the  divine 
presence,  and  the  realization  of  his  highest  visions.  He 
might  lose  his  health  by  them,  but  he  thought  they  helped 
to  reveal  his  own  soul  to  him. 

Indeed  there  can  be  no  farther  question,  still  less  denial, 
of  this  after  his  own  words.  "Yet  I  look  back  on  those  days 
and  nights  of  loneliness  and  frequent  gloorn  with  thankful- 
ness. If  I  ever  struggled  with  my  own  soul  for  purity, 
truth,  and  goodness,  it  was  there.  There,  amidst  sore  trials, 
the  great  question,  I  trust,  was  settled  within  me, —  whether 
I  would  obey  the  higher  or  lower  principles  of  my  nature  ; 
whether  I  would  be  the  victim  of  passion,  the  world,  or  the 
free  child  and  servant  of  God."  "  My  mind  was  then  receiv- 
ing its  impulse  toward  the  perfect." 

It  is  not  for  us  then  to  step  in  and  say  in  such  a  case  the 
self-discipline  and  self-denial  were  extreme,  unnecessary,  un- 
desirable, but  to  stand  in  reverence  by  that  holy  ground  on 
which  that  great  spiritual  conflict  was  fought,  or  to  ask 
whether  under  more  judicious  self-management  we  might 
not  have  had  something  better  or  stronger.  One  thing  is 
certain  :  he  would  not  then  have  been  what  he  was.  He 
would  not  have  been  himself;  and  it  is  for  himself  and  what 
he  was,  not  what  he  might  have  been,  but  was  not,  that  we 
honor  and  thank  him,  and  canonize  him  this  day. 

We  can  easily  imagine  that  as  St.  Paul,  after  the  great 
revulsion  of  his  nature,  needed  his  two  years'  quiet  in 
Arabia,  so  Channing,  after  his  fierce  spiritual  conflict, 
should  need  a  season  of  repose  to  restore  his  health,  mature 
his  thought,  and  gather  up  the  splintered  forces  of  nature 
before  fastening  himself  to  the  work  of  his  life.  Accord- 
ingly, from  his  twentieth  to  his  twenty-third  year,  he  lived  in 
his  house  in  Newport  and  at  Harvard,  where  as  regent  (a 
kind   of   head   monitor  to   preserve  order)   he  had  a    quiet 

31 


466  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

opportunity  of  following  his  studies,  till  at  twenty-three  he 
became  minister  of  the  church  in  Federal  Street,  Boston, 
which  he  rendered  so  celebrated,  and  with  which  he  was 
connected  some  forty  years. 

It  is  not  within  my  design  to  follow  minutely  a  career 
which  was  singularly  uniform  and  uneventful  except  in 
thought  and  utterance.  I  prefer  rather  to  study  the  char- 
acteristics of  c^ir  hero,  and  to  try  to  ascertain  how  this 
stately  tree  grew  up. 

The  political  state  of  society  into  which  he  was  born  had, 
I  think,  an  immense  influence  in  the  formation  of  the  man. 
When  he  was  born  in  1780,  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
(July  4,  1776)  had  only  been  made  four  years,  and  the 
war  between  England  and  America  was  still  going  on. 
(Peace   1782.) 

Lord  Cornwallis  was  carrying  on  his  hangings  of  Ameri- 
can citizens  and  the  rest  of  his  ruthless  proceedings.  The 
recent  oppression  and  tyranny  of  England  were  fresh  in  the 
minds  and  frequent  on  the  tongues  of  all  about  him ;  and  her 
harassing  and  spiteful  endeavors  to  crush  the  nascent  inde- 
pendence of  his  countrymen,  and  to  force  them  once  again 
to  bow  their  necks  to  the  hateful  yoke  they  had  thrown  off, 
were  even  then  filling  with  sounds  of  a  fiery  indignation  the 
atmosphere  into  which  this  child  was  born.  I  date  to  these 
early  influences  and  surroundings  that  hatred  of  injustice 
and  oppression  which  signalized  his  after-life,  and  caused 
that  humane  and  gentle  nature  to  flush  up  with  indignation 
in  the  presence  of  any  wrong.  Thus,  he  was  a  republican, 
not  necessarily  because  that  was  the  best  form  of  govern- 
ment under  all  circumstances  that  could  possibly  be,  but 
because  the  Republic  was  to  him  the  mother  and  the  nurse 
of  Liberty,  of  Justice,  of  Happiness.  And  as  he  saw  her  laws 
developing  themselves  in  the  free  air  into  better  and  better 
and  wiser  and  wiser  completeness  ;  as  he  saw  a  native  sci- 


CELEBRATION  AT  MANCHESTER.  467 

ence,  a  native  literature,  and  a  jurisprudence  growing  up 
not  only  to  enrich  his  country,  but  to  win  the  admiration  of 
the  world ;  as  he  saw  the  measureless  lands  stretch  them- 
selves out  to  afford  independence  and  competence  to  count- 
less myriads  ;  as  he  saw  the  cfowds  of  human  beings  coming 
from  the  hopelessness  and  the  misery  of  the  old  countries, 
with  their  over-crowded  populations,  to  start  a  life  of  hope 
and  energy  for  generations,  in  what  he  now  called  his  own, 
—  he  was  proud  of  his  country,  as  he  had  reason  to  be. 

As  the  early  memories,  however,  of  the  bitter  time  of 
wrong  and  struggle  with  wrong  faded  before  the  light  of 
his  lofty  spirit,  and  he  could  remember  and  appreciate 
the  hearty  sympathy  of  many  a  manly  English  statesman, 
and  the  best  half  of  the  English  nation  during  the  very 
time  of  the  war,  with  the  struggle  of  his  country,  he  could 
afford  to  forget  and  forgive  the  arbitrary  insistence  of  that 
brief  time  on  the  part  of  a  man  and  a  generation  that  were 
past, —  he  took  it  as  an  unhappy  episode, —  and,  going  back 
to  the  past,  he  cherished  a  glad  pride  and  affection  for  that 
far-off  little  island  that  had  been  the  home  of  his  fathers, 
and  was  by  her  literature  and  learning  the  nurse  of  his  own 
soul. 

In  truth,  Channing  saw,  and  his  seeing  should  carry 
instruction  to  all  coming  time,  that  the  England  that  then 
or  since  has  refused  its  sympathy  to  America  in  any  of 
her  great  struggles  for  justice  and  for  freedom  is  not  the 
England  of  the  English  people.  It  is  in  its  fulness,  or  its 
remains,  that  Old  England  that  —  under  the  Stuarts  —  per- 
secuted and  drove  away  its  own  children,  followed  tliem 
to  their  new  homes  and  persecuted  them  there,  annulled 
their  charters,  took  away  their  rights,  and  fought  them. 
And  the  Englishmen  that  were  thus  treated  in  America 
left  behind  them  brethren  in  bonds  in  England ;  and  for 
generations  we,  too,  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  have  been 


468  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Struggling  for  our  rights,  and  pressed  down  under  the  bur- 
dens of  our  wrongs,  compelled  to  eat  dear  bread,  denied 
a  voice  in  the  representation  of  our  country  or  the  govern- 
ment of  our  native  towns,  the  doors  of  our  universities 
shut  against  our  children,  marriage  made  impossible  to  us 
except  by  a  compulsory  religious  service  opposed  to  our 
tastes  and  convictions,  education  offered  to  us  in  small 
doles  of  charity, —  where  should  I  end  the  list  ?  No  :  our 
American  brothers  fought  their  battle,  and  won  it :  we 
have  fought  our  battle,  and  nearly  won  it,  too ;  but  the  con- 
test on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  has  been  the  same.  We 
are,  and  we  always  have  been,  on  the  same  side.  We  are 
united  in  the  same  aims  and  hopes  and  sympathies.  We 
ought  forever  and  forever  to  form  parts  of  the  same  band 
of  progress.  Channing  saw  all  this  clearly :  he  knew  it 
was  not  and  never  could  be  the  England  proper  that 
sought  to  wrong  America  or  refused  her  sympathy.  He 
knew  it  was  only  the  old  tyrannical  element  in  it  that  had 
sought  to  wrong  Englishmen,  too.  With  this  England, 
the  true  England,  our  England,  we  are  necessarily,  he 
said,  in  a  perennial  alliance;  and  when,  in  1812,  the 
American  Government  declared  war  against  England,  he 
almost  shrieked  out  against  it  as  impossible.  It  would  be 
the  direst  blow  that  we  could  deal  to  the  progress  of  all  we 
held  good  and  right :  it  would  be  a  blow  to  the  progress  of 
the  world. 

It  is  curious  that,  though  he  seems  to  have  read  a  good 
deal,  the  influence  of  literature  was  not  great  upon  him. 
It  was  only  indeed  a  small  and  select  part  of  what  he 
read  that  he  gathered,  as  it  were,  into  his  mind,  or 
assimilated  to  his  moral  being.  He  does  not  seem  to 
have  cared  for  what  has  been  happily  termed  "  a  general 
fertilization  of  the  mind."  What  he  read  must  illustrate 
or  strengthen  some  grand  moral  aim  of  his  own,  or  aspira- 


CELEBRATION  AT  MANCHESTER.  469 

tion  for  humanity,  or  he  did  not  care  about  it  for  any  other 
character  of  influence.  Thus,  it  is  astonishing  to  find  him 
saying,  after  going  through  almost  all  the  great  writers  of 
England  up  to  his  own  date,  "  English  theology  seems  to 
me,  on  the  whole,  little  worth  :  there  is  little  in  it  to  repay 
the  attention  of  an  enlightened  mind."  But  what  he 
meant  was  that  he  did  not  get  the  idea  of  Christianity 
reproduced  in  its  integrity  in  the  class  of  writings  where 
it  was  particularly  to  be  expected  it  should  be  found.  He 
acknowledges  that  he  had  received  help  from  these  sources  ; 
for  he  excepts  from  the  above  sweeping  censure  some 
thirty  or  forty  writers, —  among  them  Butler,  Cudvvorth, 
Hooker,  and  Leighton, —  but  he  did  not  find  even  in  these 
men  the  free,  untramelled,  trusting  study  and  declaration 
of  the  truth  from  which  he  himself  longed  for  help.  He 
says,  in  language  which  for  power  and  explicitness  has 
never  been  surpassed,  referring  to  every  creed-bound,  man- 
acled form  of  establishment,  "  An  Established  Church  is 
the  grave  of  intellect.  To  impose  a  fixed,  unchangeable 
creed  is  to  raise  prison  walls  around  the  mind  ;  and,  when 
the  reception  of  this  creed  is  made  the  condition  of  dig- 
nities and  rich  benefices,  it  produces  moral  as  well  as  intel- 
lectual degradation,  and  palsies  the  conscience  as  much 
as  it  fetters  the  thought.  Once  make  antiquity  a  model 
for  the  future  ages,  and  fasten  on  the  mind  a  system  too 
sacred  for  examination  and  beyond  which  it  must  not  stray, 
and  in  extinguishing  its  hope  of  progress  you  take  away  its 
life." 

I  think  I  know  of  no  writer  that  owed  less  to  other  writers 
than  Channing,  or  whose  religion  and  thought  were  more 
self-originated.  This  gives  his  earlier  utterances  their  won- 
derful freshness,  and  startled  the  world  into  some  degree 
of  attention.  He  will  never  go  down  to  posterity  as  the 
author    of    any    system    or   rank    among    what    are    called 


470  cnANNiNi;  ckntenakv. 

Scientific  Tlicologians ;  and  such  among  mankind  is  the 
love  of  argument,  the  longing  for  logic,  the  desire  to  pen- 
etrate into  the  hidden  things  of  God  by  a  clear  metaphysic, 
—  to  ha\e,  in  short,  a  well-sustained  and  well-wrought  out 
system  of  thought  and  belief, —  however  hollow,  fanciful, 
and  mistaken  may  be  its  basis, —  such  as  in  fact  we  find 
in  the  works  of  Augustine  and  the  Institutes  of  Calvin,  that 
Channing  as  a  theologian,  or  the  author  and  systematizer 
of  a  theology,  may  have  no  name  and  no  place  in  the  world's 
history.  While  as  a  thinker,  a  breather  of  purity  and  faith, 
the  imparter  to  the  world  of  a  serene  atmosphere  of  holy 
Christian  reality  and  health,  a  great  reflection  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  a  bearer  on  of  his  pure  likeness,  he  will  survive, 
incorporated  into  the  life  of  the  world,  and  finding  his 
unconscious  immortality  in  the  hearts  of  generations  to 
come,  when  the  great  system-writers  I  have  named  will  only 
live  as  specimens  of  a  wasted  ingenuity  and  a  false  and  mis- 
leading dogma. 

Closely  connected  with  this  marked  fact  in  the  psychol- 
ogy of  Channing  is  the  adverse  criticism  sometimes  passed 
upon  him, —  that  he  was  incapable  of  sustained  continuity 
of  thought.  I  consider  his  whole  life  was  one  continuous 
course  of  growing  and  developing  thought.  Remember 
that  he  was  a  Christian  minister,  had  the  pastorate  of  a 
congregation,  which  that  very  thought  made  large,  that  he 
was  bound  through  a  great  part  of  his  life  to  weekly  duty, 
was  to  produce  powerful  effects  in  short  times  and  at 
short  intervals.  No  person  of  culture  and  of  religious 
tastes,  from  the  English  nobleman  to  the  humblest  minister, 
came  to  Boston  without  going  to  drink  at  this  fountain  of 
inspiration.  The  very  success  of  these  concentrated  efforts, 
the  very  intenseness  of  these  emotional  discharges,  so  to 
speak,  the  quick  and  finished  gleams  and  flashes  of  his 
soul,  absorbed  and  all  but  exhausted  the  power  of  exiDression 


CELEBRATION    AT    MANCHESTER.  47 1 

in  his  nature.  What  could  you  expect  besides,  except  what 
you  got,  the  occasional  lecture  and  the  occasional  review  ? 
These  were  not,  indeed,  Iliads  or  a  Novum  Organum  ;  but 
they  sped  their  way  over  the  United  States  and  Europe, 
striking  chords  of  an  ennobling  and  enlarging  sympathy 
in  thousands  of  hearts,  and  helping  to  treasure  up  great 
stores  of  moral  result,  and  forming  the  noblest  continuity 
of  a  well-sustained  and  undeviating  purpose.  A  man 
may  live  an  epic  as  well  as  write  one,  and  may  be  a 
philosopher  without  writing  on  philosophy ;  and,  in  this 
case,  Coleridge's  remark  had  the  right  ring  about  it,  when 
he  said  that  Channing  was  a  philosopher  in  a  double 
sense,  for  he  had  the  love  of  wisdom  and  the  wisdom  of 
love.  And  when  I  hear  not  of  what  he  was,  but  of  what  he 
was  not,  I  sometimes  wish  we  could  apply  to  the  great 
heroes  of  thought  and  service, 'in  their  strong  and  beautiful 
variety,  the  spirit  of  the  ever  memorable  lines  of  Spenser  on 
the  trees  :  — 

"  The  sailing  pine,  the  cedar  proud  and  tall, 
The  builder  oak,  sole  king  of  forests  all, 
The  yew,  obedient  to  the  bender's  will, 
The  birch  for  shafts,  the  sallow  for  the  mill, 
The  myrrh  sweet-bleeding  in  the  bitter  wound; 
The  war-like  beech,  the  ash  for  nothing  ill, 
The  fruitful  olive,  and  the  plaintain  round." 

So  I  wish  that  some  of  our  critics  would  open  their  eyes  to 
the  largeness  of  the  world  and  "see  men  as  trees,  walking." 
In  the  numerous  estimates  of  the  character  of  Channing 
and  the  influence  of  his  writings,  there  has  come  to  be  an 
almost  monotonous  uniformity,  arising,  however,  from  a 
profound  unanimity.  In  truth,  he  was  a  man  most  easily 
interpreted;  for  he  so  fully  interpreted  himself.  This  has 
given  rise  to  the  charge  of  iteration,  and  the  charge  is  true. 
He  was  a  preacher;  and,  if  the  preacher  does  not  iterate, 
he  cannot  create,  and  he  will  leave  behind  him  no  enduring 


47^  CIIANN'ING    CKNTENAKV. 

impression.  Is  a  great,  {lee[>  thought,  is  an  all-underlying 
jirinciple,  to  be  thrown  on  the  scarcely,  perhaps,  listening 
ear  of  the  world  oiicc,  and  never  repeated?  "There  is  a 
great  deal  of  iteration  in  his  style,"  and  so  there  is  in  the 
sun's.  The  sun  rises  every  day  and  thus  iterates  itself,  but 
no  two  days  in  the  life  of  the  world  have  been  the  same. 
And  Channing,  finding  the  great,  but  perhaps  only  half- 
acknowledged,  if  half-acknowledged,  truth  lying  day  after 
day  deep  down  in  his  breast,  uttered,  and  uttered,  and  ut- 
tered it  again.  But  that  is  no  reason  that,  if  it  has  long 
taken  possession  of  our  own  minds,  ivc  should  go  back  to  the 
former  days  of  its  first  formation  and  its  first  fine  enuncia- 
tion. The  whole  of  Channing  is  not  for  all  of  us.  For 
some,  of  us,  unquestionably,  the  half  is  better  than  the  whole. 
Because  it  is  a  part  of  his  very  triumph  that  he  has  now 
made  so  many  of  these  great  truths  familiar  to  us,  that  they 
form  part  of  the  very  atmosphere  we  breathe.  But  there 
are  millions  and  millions  yet,  to  whom  I  regret  to  say  his  is 
an  unspoken  gospel,  a  much-needed,  though  as  yet,  unheard 
word. 

There  is  no  use  attempting  to  make  a  mystery  of  Chan- 
ning. The  simplicity  of  his  aims  and  methods  is  transpar- 
ent :  the  results  are  equally  clear.  He  says  :  "Christianity  is 
a  revelation  of  the  infinite  universal  parental  love  of  God 
toward  his  human  family."  "  Receive  Christianity  as  given 
to  raise  you  in  the  scale  of.  spiritual  being."  "There  is 
more  danger  from  thinking  too  meanly  of  human  nature 
than  from  thinking  too  highly  of  it."  "  Expect  no  good  from 
Christ  any  further  than  you  are  exalted  by  his  character  and 
teachings."  "Creeds  are  to  the  Scriptures  what  rushlights 
are  to  the  sun."  Christianity  is  a  rational  religion:  if  it 
were  not  so,  I  should  be  ashamed  to  profess  it."  But 
"Christianity,  we  must  always  remember,  is  a  temper  and 
spirit  rather  than  a  doctrine." 


CELEBRATION  AT  MANCHESTER.  473 

But  what  that  doctrine  was  he  had  no  more  doubt  than 
what  that  spirit  and  temper  were.  In  the  broad  sense  of 
the  word,  from  his  early  manhood  to  his  death,  he  was  a 
Unitarian,  and  could  be,  from  the  principles  on  which  he  con- 
ducted his  inquiries,  no  other.  For  he  dismissed  at  once,  as 
unauthoritative,  all  intervening  evidence  between  himself 
and  Christ,  and  found,  he  said,  no  Trinity  in  Nature, 
no  Trinity  in  Reason,  and  no  Trinity  in  Scripture.  And 
the  simple  truths  of  this  form  of  religion,  which  he  re- 
garded as  those  of  the  gospel,  he  maintained  in  no  merely 
affirmative  style,  but  put  them  face  to  face  with  the  opposing 
errors,  that  the  nature  of  both  might  be  clearly  seen  ;  and 
thus,  notwithstanding  his  gentleness  and  his  candor, —  nay, 
in  consequence  of  his  candor, —  he  was,  in  portions  of  his 
writings,  about  the  most  vividly  incisively  controversial  of 
all  our  great  writers  on  divinity.  But  he  said,  "  I  \'alue 
Unitarianism  not  because  I  regard  it  as  in  itself  a  perfect 
system,  but  as  freed  from  many  great  pernicious  errors  of 
the  older  systems,  as  encouraging  freedom  of  thought,  as 
raising  us  above  the  despotisms  of  the  Church,  and  as  breath- 
ing a  mild  and  tolerant  spirit  into  all  the  members  of  the 
Christian  body." 

But  he  would  not,  he  said,  live  within  the  narrow  walls 
of  any  sect,  but  under  the  open  sky  (as  he  himself  said  of 
Milton,  "great  minds  everywhere  were  his  kindred"),  in  the 
broad  light,  looking  far  and  wide,  seeing  with  my  own  eye, 
hearing  with  my  own  ear,  and  following  Truth  meekly,  but 
resolutely,  however  arduous  and  solitary  the  path  in  which 
she  leads.  So  intensely  did  he  verify  each  one  of  his  own 
convictions  that  he  could  not  admit  them  afterward  into 
question,  and  this  gave  an  air  of  finality  to  his  mind  in  later 
years,  not  finality  for  others,  or  finality  for  truth,  or  a  con- 
scious finality  to  his  own  mental  state,  but  a  stillness,  sct- 
tledness,  repose, —  the   repose  of  a  stately  vessel  that  had 


474  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

braved  i)crilous  seas  and  encountered  many  a  storm,  but  was 
now  resting  in  the  harbor  of  a  completed  voyage.  But  they 
will  greatly  mistake  his  spirit,  who  think  this  meant  ultimate 
completeness  or  turn  him  into  a  creed-maker  for  mankind, 
tliough  I  myself  should  think  him,  if  it  were  so,  the  very 
noblest  that  has  trod  this  earth  since  Jesus  Christ.  But 
there  was  nothing  of  which  he  himself  had  a  greater  dread 
than  stationariness.  He  declares  that  he  would  not  linger 
round  his  own  writings  for  fear  that  his  mind  might  become 
stationary.  He  rebuked  those  who  spoke  of  the  state  of  the 
blessed,  of  heaven  as  stationary  :  he  latterly  objected  to  Uni- 
tarianism  even  that  it  had  become  stationary,  "and  now  [he 
writes  with  displeasure]  we  have  a  Unitarian  orthodoxy." 
He  says  the  Christianity  of  the  primitive  age  is  not  the 
standard  for  all  that  follows.  "  It  is  growing  light,  and  must 
be  expounded  by  every  age  for  itself."  He  says,  "  I  am 
surer  that  my  rational  nature  is  from  God  than  that  any  book 
is  the  expression  of  his  will."  It  is  of  the  very  highest  im- 
portance that  in  honoring  the  memory  of  this  great  man, 
and  calling  attention  to  and  circulating  in  larger  and  larger 
quantities  his  writings,  we  should  bear  continually  in  mind 
these  noble  declarations.  Already  some,  a  great  deal,  of  that 
new  light  which  he  knew  must  come  has  dawned  upon  us. 
Already,  of  many  things  he  has  written,  has  that  magnificent 
hope  been  fulfilled, —  "I  shall  see  with  no  emotion  but  joy 
those  fugitive  productions  forgotten  and  lost  in  superior 
brightness."  But,  although  this  may  be  so,  he  has  helped  to 
bring  us,  and  will  still  help  to  bring  many,  many  more,  to  the 
point  at  which  we  are  ready  to  receive  and  waiting  for  that 
light.  He  himself  would  now  spurn  us  as  unworthy  spiritual 
descendants,  if  we  were  content  to  remain  exactly  where  he 
had  left  us,  with  no  new  irradication,  no  fresh  enthusiasm,  no 
opening  vision.  What !  he  would  say,  with  all  this  light  of 
knowledge  that   has  flooded  in  on  your  world  since  I  was 


CELEBRATION  AT  MANCHESTER.  475 

among  you,  have  you  no  fresh  start  to  make  in  the  great 
race  ?  Can  you  do  nothing  but  slavishly  repeat  me,  using 
words  and  arguments  that  I  myself  begin  to  feel  are  inade- 
quate, if  not  untrue?  I  gave  you  the  richest,  finest  version 
of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  that  has  reached  your  ears  for 
eighteen  centuries.  Are  you  doing  anything  to  spread  it .-' 
I  put  you  on  the  path  of  a  holy  and  happy  progress.  Arc 
you  moving  on  it .''  I  left  you  gifts  many  of  yourselves  con- 
sidered great,  and  led  some  sad  captivities  captive.  Are 
you  inspired  by  my  examples  ?  Are  you,  with  your  increased 
lights  and  powers,  doing  for  humanity  and  truth  in  your,  day 
what  I  strove  with  all  my  heart  and  nature  to  do  in  mine  ? 

It  is  true  that  in  the  later  years  of  his  life,  especially  in 
seasons  of  depression  and  sickness,  some  of  the  new  forms 
of  Scriptural  criticism  and  inquiry  struck  pain  into  the  nerve 
of  his  mental  eye  ;  but  he  braved  the  pain,  and  would  not 
close  the  eye.  He  had  confidence  in  truth  ;  though,  with  his 
habit  of  looking  at  everything  as  it  affected  the  holiness  and 
happiness  of  man,  he  could  not  himself  see  how  these  things 
were  to  benefit  the  race. 

But  while  changes  have  come  over  the  thought  of  our 
time,  and  on  all  sides  men  are  rising  up  to  carry  on  the 
thought  of  his,  yet  his  work  is  far  from  done,  and  his  good 
influence  far  from  exhausted  on  the  wisest  and  the  best  of 
us,  while  for  the  masses  of  Christendom  and  of  humanity  it 
may  be  made  still  a  star  of  guidance  to  prostrate  ignorant 
millions.  What  man  is  there  living  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
who  would  not  rise  higher  and  nobler  from  the  study  of  that 
unrivalled  decalogue  of  freedom,  each  clause  of  which  begins 
"  I  call  that  mind  free".'  Are  we  still  beyond  or  above  the 
power  of  his  word  on  the  misery  and  wickedness  of  war, 
or  on  the  madness  and  ignoblcness  of  a  simi)]y  Napoleonic 
ambition  ?  Are  there  no  other  annexations  to  be  deprecated 
besides  those  of  Texas  ?     Does  not  the  very  course  of  our 


476  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

searchini;'  physical  inquiries  still  leave  room  for  his  voice  on 
the  nobleness  of  man  ?  Has  the  timid  outward  and  ungenu- 
ine  conformity  of  our  times  no  need  of  the  rebuke  of  his 
courage  and  his  robust  virility  ?  Has  God  so  many  faithful 
children,  has  Christ  so  many  loving  followers,  has  man  so 
many  helpful  brothers,  have  purity  and  peace  so  many  ear- 
nest advocates  that  we  have  no  farther  need  of  him  ?  Listen 
to  what  men  say  of  him.  The  French  say  he  is  a  new 
Fenelon  ;  the  Germans  say  he  is  a  new  Schleiermacher  ; 
Bunsen  says  that  "  his  work  cannot  be  too  highly  estimated, 
and  is  destined  to  be  a  still  increasing  influence  on  the 
spiritual  conception  of  Christianity  and  the  practical  appli- 
cation of  its  principles."  "  He  is  a  man  like  a  Hellene, 
a  citizen  like  a  Roman,  aiid  Christian  like  an  apostle.  If 
one  whose  whole  life  and  conversation  in  the  sight  of  all 
his  fellow-citizens  stand  in  absolute  correspondence  with  the 
earnestness  of  his  Christian  language  and  are  without  a  spot 
be  not  a  prophet  of  God's  presence  in  humanity,  I  know  of 
none  such."  "When  first  I  came  across  Dr.  Channing's 
writings,"  says  the  hardy  agriculturist  of  Scotland,  the  late 
George  Hope,  bred  a  Calvinist,  "  I  was  electrified  by  them, 
and  felt  that  he  gave  a  clear,  articulated  expression  to  the 
dim  thoughts  that  had  previously  floated  through  my  mind, 
and  lifted  me  nearer  to  the  Infinite  Father."  Says  an  early 
and  diligent  student  of  him,  in  an  article  in  the  Christian 
Teacher,  published  at  his  death,  which  is  so  consummate 
in  its  discerning  power  and  truth  that  we  could  not  do 
a  greater  honor  to  Channing's  memory  than  republish  it : 
"  Perhaps  no  one  living  man  ever  stood  in  the  same  spiritual 
relation  to  so  many  minds.  .  .  .  The  doctrines  of  Jesus  were 
the  lights  in  which  he  regarded  the  relations  of  every  human 
being  to  society  and  to  God,  and  consequently  his  judgments 
on  moral  subjects  were  uttered  with  a  simplicity,  a  com- 
manding clearness  and  fulness  of  conviction  that  make  them 


CELEBRATION  AT  MANCHESTER.  477 

sound  like  inspirations.  .  .  .  He  spoke  like  a  prophet  as  from 
immediate  vision,  as  one  who  had  come  from  listening  to  the 
everlasting  voice." 

So  nearly  unparalleled  was  his  influence  even  on  minds  of 
a  very  high  order  that  the  Italian  professor  Sbarbaro  says 
that  "  no  single  writer  since  Dante  has  ever  made  so  great 
an  impression  on  my  faculties  as  Channing  "  ;  and  he  speaks 
of  the  rapid  and  universal  diffusion  of  his  works  in  all  cor- 
ners of  the  civilized  earth. 

Innumerable  are  the  tributes  to  his  greatness  and  his  in- 
fluence which  I  have  collected  at  some  pains,  but  which  a 
regard  to  your  time  and  patience  compels  me  to  omit,  to- 
gether, I  may  say,  with  a  great  deal  of  other  matter  which 
I  had  prepared.  These  testimonies  come  from  the  leaders 
of  thought ;  and  they  come  from  almost  every  land, —  from 
America,  from  England,  from  France,  from  Holland,  from 
Italy,  from  Switzerland,  from  Germany,  from  Transylvania. 
And  each  year  they  increase  in  volume  and  significance, 
from  the  first  response  of  sympathy  sent  by  the  Unitarians 
in  this  country,  more  than  half  a  century  ago,  to  the  other 
day  in  London,  when  M.  Renan  wrote  of  him  "  that  he  heard 
the  first  warning  sounds  of  the  clock  of  the  future  gospel," 
and  as  one  of  the  grandest  of  those  saints  whom  Rome  had 
not  yet  canonized.  Almost  as  numerous,  too,  are  the  edi- 
tions that  have  been  published  of  the  whole  or  portions  of 
his  works,  and  of  the  translations  that  have  been  made  of 
them  into  foreign  tongues  ;  and  at  this  moment,  as  a  farther 
instalment,  the  spirited  step  has  been  taken  to  offer  to  the 
world  a  new  edition  of  a  hundred  thousand  copies. 

Ought  we  to  let  the  centenary  year  of  his  birth  pass  by 
without  gratitude  to  God,  without  gratitude  to  this  his  ser- 
vant, and  a  renewed  desire,  with  renewed  encouragement,  to 
spread  far  and  wide  those  pure  influences  by  which  the  souls 
of  so  many  of  us  have  been  raised  and  blessed,  and  with 
which  we  must  try  to  baptize  the  nations .-' 


478  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

At  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  Wicksteed's  address,  remarks 
were  made  by  the  Rev.  William  Gaskell,  Mr.  John  Dendy, 
Rev.  Charles  T.  Poynting,  Professor  Roscoe,  and  Mr.  E.  C. 
Harding. 

Votes  of  thanks  were  then  passed  to  the  Chairman,  and  to 
Mr.  Wicksteed  for  his  very  interesting  and  valuable  address. 

The  following  impromptu  acrostic  was  composed,  during 
the  meeting,  by  a  lady  who  was  unfortunately  so  placed  as 
not  to  be  able  to  hear  the  speakers  :  — 

Come  ye  people,  let  us  pay 
Homage  to  the  Great  to-day, 
And  our  restless  spirits  lay 
Neath  his  pure  and  noble  sway. 
Never  will  ye  hours  repent 
In  such  sweet  communion  spent ; 
Never  may  the  impulse  die 
Given  by  a  soul  so  high  ! 


THE  CELEBRATION  AT  BELFAST. 


A  LARGE  number  of  the  Unitarians  of  the  Belfast  and  the 
surrounding  districts  commemorated,  at  a  collation  in  the 
Music  Hall,  the  centenary  of  the  birth  of  Dr.  William  Ellery 
Channing.  The  company,  which  included  a  good  many 
ladies,  numbered  between  one  and  two  hundred.  Among 
those  present  were  Hon.  W.  Porter,  General  Richmond, 
U.  S.  Consul  ;  Messrs.  E.  J.  Harland,  J. P.,  John  Miller, 
J. P.  (Comber),  W.  J.  C.  Allen,  J. P.,  John  Campbell,  G.  W. 
Wolff,  James  Dickson,  John  Carlisle,  N.  Oakman,  H.  Darbi- 
shire,  J.  R.  Neill,  R.  W.  Gordon,  G.  Fisher,  Joseph  Mackay, 
A.  Hunter,  H.  Murray,  Marcus  J.  Ward,  John  Rogers,  R. 
M'Calmont,  W.  Spackman,  John  Little,  Wallace  Boyle, 
J.  W.  Russell,  G.  K.  Smith,  F.  Frankfort  Moore,  J.  Salvage, 
John  Smyth,  Jr.  (Banbridge),  W.  Smith  (Banbridge) ;  Revs. 
C.  J.  M'Alester  (Holywood),  J.  Hall  (Ballyclare),  English 
Crooks  (Ballyclare),  Hugh  Moore,  M.A.  (Newtownards), 
Harold  Bylett  (Moneyrea),  David  Thompson  (Dromore), 
Barnard  Gisby  (Rademon),  David  Thompson  (Hopeton 
Street),  J.  J.  Wright  (Mountpottinger),  Thomas  Dunker- 
ley,  B.A.  (Comber),  James  Kennedy  (Larne),  T.  H.  M.  Scott, 
M.A.  (Dunmurry),  R.  J.  Orr,  M.A.,  James  Cooper,  H.  T. 
Basford  (Banbridge),  Joseph  Pollard,  James  C.  Street,  and 
A.  Gordon. 


4S0  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Rev.  R.  J.  Orr  said  grace.  Rev.  T.  H.  M.  Scott  said 
grace  after  meat. 

In  the  absence  of  Dr.  Ritchie,  J. P.,  from  illness,  James  M. 
Darbishire,  Esq.,  was.  on  the  motion  of  Rev.  J.  C.  Street, 
called  to  the  chair. 

Rev.  A.  Gordon  stated  that  letters  of  sympathy  with  the 
object  of  the  meeting  and  regretting  inability  to  attend 
were  received  from  Revs.  R.  Campbell  (Templepatrick), 
President  of  the  Non-subscribing  Association  and  Modera- 
tor of  the  Remonstrant  Synod,  S.  C.  Nelson,  M.A.  (Down- 
patrick),  David  Gordon  (Downpatrick),  Robert  Cleland,  B.A. 
(Crumlin),  John  M'Caw  (Killinchy),  William  Whitelegge 
(Cork),  W.  S.  Smith  (Antrim),  J.  Miskimmin  (Greyabbey), 
W.  Napier  (Clough),  John  Jellie  (Cairncastle) ;  Messrs.  J.  R. 
Musgrave,  J.P.,  High  Sheriff  of  Donegal,  John  Millar,  J. P. 
(Lisburn),  W.  Robertson  (Belfast),  Thomas  Andrews  (Com- 
ber), Professor  Hodges,  M.D.  (Belfast),  Messrs.  Edward 
Gardner,  LL.B.  (Downpatrick),  T.  M'Clelland  (Belfast), 
and  David  C.  Patterson  (Holyrood).  Mr.  Gordon  read  an 
interesting  extract  from  a  letter  by  the  venerable  Rev.  S.  C. 
Nelson. 

The  Chairman,  who  was  received  \vith  applause,  thanked 
the  meeting  for  the  honor  they  had  conferred  upon  him  in 
asking  him  to  take  the  place  of  Dr.  Ritchie.  They  all  knew 
that  Dr.  Ritchie's  spirit  was  with  them,  though  he  was 
absent  in  the  flesh. 

Rev.  J.  C.  Street  moved  the  following  resolution  :  — 
"That,  in  commemorating  to-day  the  one -hundredth  birth- 
day of  William  Ellery  Channing,  we  desire  to  pay  a  reverent 
tribute  to  the  transcendent  beauty  and  sweetness  of  his 
character,  which  shone  through  all  his  acts  and  all  his  writ- 
ings, and  constitutes  for  all  time  a  living  exemplification  of 
manly  dignity  and  Christian  worth."  He  said,  not  here 
alone,    but    in    many   other   parts    of   the    English-speaking 


CELEBRATION    AT    BELFAST.  48 1 

world,  citizens  are  gathered  together  to  do  honor  to  the 
name  and  to  the  works  of  William  Ellery  Channing.  There 
were  possibly  others  than  those  of  our  own  spiritual  com- 
munion who  are  being  brought  together  on  that  day,  and 
who  in  other  parts  of  the  world  are  doing  as  we  are  doing, 
and  are  united  with  us  in  a  common  bond,  and  making  us 
feel  that  we  are  engaged  in  a  genuine  work.  A  hundred 
years  have  passed  since  the  advent  of  William  Ellery  Chan- 
ning to  the  world.  Many  men  have  lived  and  died  within 
that  period,  but  of  the  many  comparatively  few  are  remem- 
bered as  Channing  is  remembered  this  day.  Generations 
rise  and  pass  away,  and  only  the  souls  that  are  richer  and 
riper  and  rarer  in  our  race  are  perpetuated  in  the  memory  of 
those  who  succeed  them.  It  is  because  there  was  some- 
thing exceptional  in  the  character  and  work  of  Channing 
that  men  and  women  are  assembled  that  day  to  honor  his 
name.  For  my  own  part,  I  do  not  look  upon  Channing  as 
one  of  the  greatest  of  men,  but  I  look  upon  him  as  one  of 
the  best  of  men.  He  was  not  profound  in  his  scholarship,  he 
was  not  majestic  in  his  mental  powers  ;  yet  there  was  a 
wealth  of  scholarship  and  there  were  powers  of  singular 
sweetness  which  belonged  to  him,  and  which  have  secured 
for  him  a  place  which  men  of  larger  scholarship  were  never 
able  to  occupy.  Whatever  scholarship  and  mental  power 
he  had  were  hallowed  and  sweetened  by  one  of  the  kindest, 
gentlest,  and  most  loving  spirits  that  ever  radiated  in  the 
heart  and  brain  of  a  human  being. 

One  of  the  main  characteristics  of  Dr.  Channing  was  that 
perfume  of  sweetness  and  holiness,  that  high-toned  morality, 
which  are  to  be  found  running  through  all  he  said  and  all  he 
did,  and  which  will  forever  remain  as  his  greatest  monument 
among  mankind.  This  resolution  will  embody,  not  simply 
the  sentiments  of  this  meeting,  but  of  all  those  whom  we 
represent  in  the  North  of  Ireland  ;  and  it  would  al.so  clfectu- 


482  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

ally  embody  the  sentiments  of  those  who  in  different  parts 
of  the  world  were  that  day  commemorating  the  birth  of 
Channing.  The  resolution  recognizes  the  wonderful  sweet- 
ness and  beauty  of  Channing's  character,  \id  no  reader  of 
his  writings  could  help  failing  to  be  impre!S(Sed  with  that. 
Though  Channing  had  to  hold  aloft  a  banner  "that  required 
firm  hands  to  hold  it  up,  still  in  all  his  controversies,  and 
they  were  many,  in  all  the  battles  in  which  he  W9.s  engaged, 
and  they  were  not  few,  his  greatest  foes  admitted  the  won- 
derful sweetness  of  his  thoughts  and  utterances.  Dr.  Chan- 
ning dignified  controversy  and  exalted  reasoning.  He  made 
those  who  disputed  with  him  feel  that  the  battle  was  not  a 
battle  of  persons,  not  a  battle  merely  of  conflict,  but  a  battle 
of  earnest  principles,  to  which  men  were  to  look  carefully 
and  reverently  in  order  that  they  might  find  what  was  the 
truth.  Men  who  enter  into  a  controversy  in  that  spirit, 
though  they  might  not  convince  their  opponents,  yet  by 
their  tenderness  of  manner  and  the  sweetness  of  their 
method  they  could  not  help  winning  for  themselves  a  pro- 
found love  and  reverent  respect.  Among  all  the  controver- 
sial writings  which  had  sprung  from  the  bosom  of  our 
Church,  none  have  had  such  a  wide  extent  of  influence  as 
the  writings  of  Channing.  He  seemed  to  be  the  fitting  in- 
strument of  the  moment.  There  was  a  great  transition  in 
public  opinion  and  religious  thought  at  the  time  that  Chan- 
ning stepped  forward  to  enter  upon  his  work.  He  seemed 
a  man  peculiarly  adapted  to  addressing  himself  to  the  con- 
troversies of  the  age.  He  dignified  his  part  of  the  contro- 
versy in  such  a  way  that  those  who  came  after  him,  having 
their  work  well  begun,  have  now  almost  carried  it  to  a  suc- 
cessful issue.  Dr.  Channing  was,  as  the  Chairman  has  told 
you,  a  Unitarian.  He  was  a  Unitarian  with  very  pronounced 
and  definite  views.  He  differed  very  much  from  many  of 
his  brethren  who  were  round  about  him,  and  his  views  were 


CELEBRATION  AT  BELFAST.  483 

not  in  harmony  with  many  of  those  held  by  his  brethren  in 
this  day.  But,  while  that  was  the  case,  he  was  a  large- 
minded  man,  who  could  put  himself  in  his  brother's  place, 
and  sometimes  see  with  his  brother's  eye  and  feel  with  his 
brother's  heart.  He  knew  that  there  were  points  of  view 
different  from  his  own,  and  that  it  might  be  that  even  an 
opponent  saw  some  measure  of  the  truth  of  God.  Hence  he 
was  largely  tolerant  in  his  spirit ;  and  hence,  though  he  was 
born  in  a  sectarian  Church,  he  rose  out  of  it,  and  entered 
into  the  universal  Church  of  God,  with  all  its  sympathies  for 
mankind;  and  hence  on  this  day  we  have,  all  over  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking lands,  men  of  broad  views  in  our  free  Churches, 
who  were  banded  together  to  do  honor  to  the  name  of  Chan- 
ning.  They  do  not  care  for  the  precise  form  of  his  thought, 
or  whether  it  expresses  exactly  their  form  or  not.  What 
they  were  honoring  that  day  was  the  large,  tolerant  catholic 
spirit  which  looked  out  into  the  universe  of  God,  and  sought 
for  the  brotherhood  of  humanity  all  over  the  world.  In  all 
probability,  in  the  history  of  the  world,  Channing  would  be 
remembered  more  for  the  work  he  did  in  connection  with 
great  social  questions  and  even  for  his  work  in  connection  with 
theology.  For,  after  all,  I  dare  say  we  all  feel  that  theology 
is  a  changing  topic,  that  it  shifts  its  as2:)ects  as  the  world 
becomes  larger,  and  as  the  truth  of  God  becomes  more  and 
more  revealed ;  but  the  great  principles  of  morality  and  free- 
dom and  righteousness,  which  belong  to  all  churches  and 
also  to  humanity,  remain  with  us  perennially,  and  will  be  to 
us  a  source  of  perennial  strength.  Dr.  Channing  threw  him- 
self as  few  men  did  into  the  great  living  controversies  of  the 
day.  He  was  always  pleading  for  righteousness  and  the 
great  principles  of  human  frecdpm.  Channing  was  a  man  of 
weak  physical  constitution  ;  but  he  seemed  to  have  mastered 
himself,  and  to  have  held  himself  supreme  in  llic  tabernacle 
of   his   own    nature.      He   beloncrcd   to  a   class   of   men    who 


484  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

jrave  an  exaltation  to  their  communion.  He  was  one  of  the 
men  we  prize  as  representing  the  highest  type  of  personal 
character.  In  the  ordinary  forms  of  daily  life,  in  his  minis- 
trations among  his  people,  in  his  utterances  from  the  pulpit, 
in  his  sympathies  with  the  slave,  in  his  work  among  poor 
sufferers  from  drunkenness,  he  carried  with  him  a  spirit  of 
wonderful  consecration,  which  tended  to  remove  many  a 
stain  from  human  life.  It  was  this  that  prominently  distin- 
guished him,  and  made  him  a  power  and  inspiration  wher- 
ever he  went,  quickening  the  men  and  women  about  him, 
and  elevating  them  into  closer  relationship  with  the  spirit  of 
the  Living  God.  We  this  day  bear  our  humble  testimony  to 
the  worth  of  that  great  life ;  and,  forgetting  many  things,  we 
join  hands,  as  we  may  not  have  done  for  many  years,  in  a 
reverent  recollection  of  one  who,  representing  none  of  our 
differences,  symbolizes  our  unity. 

Mr.  John  Campbell,  in  responding  to  the  call  to  second 
the  motion,  rejoiced  to  have  an  opportunity  of  commemorat- 
ing the  birthday  of  Dr.  Channing.  They  might  establish 
memorial  churches  and  might  publish  and  circulate  Dr. 
Channing's  works,  but  they  would  do  most  honor  to  his 
memory  by  humbly  endeavoring  to  catch  his  spirit  and 
imitate  his  virtues. 

The  Chairman  said  he  had  been  asked  to  propose  the 
following :  "  That,  in  celebrating  Dr.  Channing's  special 
services  to  our  own  denomination,  we  would  thankfully 
recognize  that  breadth  of  soul  and  delicacy  of  spiritual  touch 
which  have  rendered  his  expositions  of  Christianity  the 
common  property  of  liberal  minds  in  all  Churches." 

Rev.  A.  Gordon,  in  seconding  the  resolution,  said  :  The 
April  sun  is  shining  on  our  festivity,  in  happy  unison  with 
the  pure  and  radiant  spirit  of  him  whose  birth  we  are  met  to 
commemorate,  whose  virtues  we  remember,  and  whose  ser- 
vices we  gladly  and  proudly  own.      Channing  belonged  to  a 


CELEBRATION  AT  BELFAST.  485 

class  of  influential  minds  always  rare,  and  differing  in  some 
important  respects  from  the  majority  of  those  who  have  in- 
fluenced the  course  of  thought  and  theology  in  the  various 
denominations  and  churches.  There  were  those  of  whom 
they  could  hardly  think,  apart  from  the  peculiar  ecclesias- 
tical position  in  which  they  found  themselves  placed.  It 
would  be  impossible  to  consider  Aquinas  except  as  a  school- 
man, Hooker  save  as  an  Anglican,  Bossuet  in  any  other 
light  than  that  of  a  Roman  Catholic,  Jonathan  Edwards 
except  as  a  Calvinist,  or  John  Relly  Beard  save  as  a  Uni- 
tarian. 

Noble  as  all  these  men  were  in  their  thoughts,  and  sympa- 
thetic in  their  hearts,  nevertheless,  if  they  were  stripped 
of  their  theological  or  ecclesiastical  position,  their  identity 
would  be  destroyed,  and  they  would  become  unrecognizable 
units  in  the  crowd.  On  the  other  hand,  there  were  those 
whose  precise  theological  or  ecclesiastical  place  seemed  to 
be  rather  the  result  of  the  accident  of  time,  birth,  or  train- 
ing than  the  effect  of  any  special  innate  tendency.  Such 
men  as  Tauler,  the  Dominican ;  as  Valdes,  who,  though  we 
look  upon  him  as  one  of  our  own  predecessors,  lived  and 
died  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  ;  as  Henry  Scougal,  the 
Scottish  Episcopalian  ;  as  Bishop  Berkeley  or  Dr.  Dod- 
dridge,—  such  men  as  these  belong  not  to  one  Church,  but 
to  all.  Remove  them  from  their  immediate  surroundings, 
and  one  might  transplant  them  into  any  other  Christian 
community,  and  the  thoughts  which  they  would  breathe, 
and  in  the  main  the  words  that  they  would  speak,  would 
awaken  the  self-same  echoes  which  they  had  awakened 
before.  Now,  to  neither  of  those  classes  did  Channing 
properly  belong.  We  cannot  escape  classing  him  as  a 
denominationalist.  He  was  one  of  those  of  whom  Baxter 
was  the  grandest  example  in  the  seventeenth  century,  l^ax- 
ter  was  a  typical  English  non-conformist  :  we  might  call  him 


486  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

even  tlie  creator  of  non-conformity.  It  was  the  unresting 
eagerness  and  vehemence  of  his  conscientious  scruples, 
rejecting  any,  even  the  least,  obedience  to  an  outer  law  as 
distinguished  from  the  inward  spirit,  which  gave  existence 
and  courage  and  permanence  to  English  Dissent.  And  yet, 
though  Baxter  was  a  denominationalist  and  the  founder  of 
denominationalism,  Presbyterians  have  long  ago  forgiven 
him  his  telling  them  that  Presbyterian  was  an  odious  name. 
Unitarians  are  perfectly  content  that  he  should  assure  them 
that  the  creed  of  Athanasius,  to  his  mind,  interpreted  best 
the  deepest  of  all  mysteries,  the  mystery  of  the  Divine 
Being.  Even  conformists  gathered  round  his  monument  the 
other  day  at  Kidderminster,  acknowledging  that  the  spirit 
of  Catholic  charity  lived  in  the  man,  and  was  by  no  means 
diminished  or  injured  by  the  strength  of  his  non-conformity. 
I  think  we  may  say  this  likewise  of  Dr.  Channing,  and  per- 
haps in  a  larger  degree.  Dr.  Channing  was  decisively  a 
Unitarian  :  we  may  call  him  the  creator  of  modern  Unita- 
rianism.  It  was  he  who  took  up  the  Unitarian  name  and 
gave  it  its  modern  significance  and  present  power.  That 
name  which  their  forerunners  in  the  great  age  of  the  Refor- 
mation knew  not ;  that  name  which  Servetus  never  heard, 
and  which  Socinus  rejected  ;  that  name  which  survived  in 
obscurity  amid  a  picturesque  community  nestling  among  the 
Eastern  hills,  far  away  beyond  the  woods  and  thickets  which 
fringe  the  vast  arid  plain  of  Hungary  ;  that  name  which 
was  revived  in  England  by  the  learned  Biddle  and  the  pious 
Emlyn,  but  the  use  of  which  died  with  the  men ;  that  name 
which  was  borne  aloft  once  more  by  the  gentle  heroism  of 
Theophilus  Lindsey,  and  rnade  by  him  synonymous  with 
a  rigid  Scriptural  monotheism  and  a  stern  doctrine  of  phil- 
osophic necessity, —  that  name,  when  Channing  took  it  up, 
acquired  a  new  meaning  and  a  spiritual  importance  which 
it  never  had  attained  before.     The  famous  sermon  at  Balti- 


CELEBRATION  AT  BELFAST.  487 

more,  in  1819,  first  told  Unitarians  what  their  name  really 
meant  or  might  mean.  I  believe  that  here  in  Ireland  the 
use  of  the  name  Unitarian  dated  from  Channing's  time  and 
influence,  and  in  Ireland  that  the  name  has  always  been 
conceived  in  Channing's  sense.  It  was  not  always  so  inter- 
preted in  England.  To  understand  what  Channing's  ser- 
vices to  them  as  a  Unitarian  denomination  had  been,  they 
must  realize  what  he  had  made  their  distinctive  name  im- 
port. That  which  Priestley  thought  impossible,  and  if  pos- 
sible inexpedient,  the  amalgamation  under  one  name  of  the 
older  Arian  and  the  rising  Humanitarian  party,  was  seen, 
under  the  influence  of  Channing's  teaching,  to  be  not  only 
feasible,  but  inevitable.  And  it  was  made  so  by  the  strength 
of  Channing's  affirmations,  by  the  power  with  which  he  put 
forward  the  moral  as  well  as  the  spiritual  ground  of  our  faith, 
and  showed  that,  while  our  metaphysical  differences  may  be 
many,  there  are  points  of  union  which  bear  witness  to  a 
common  Christianity  in  all. 

It  was  this  great  doctrine  of  a  common  Christianity 
preached  by  him  in  season,  and,  some  thought,  out  of 
season,  which  enabled  him  to  be  such  a  power  not  only 
in  the  little  Church  of  which  he  was  the  mainstay  and 
vindicator,  but  a  power  also  among  enlightened  men  of 
all  other  Churches.  We  cannot  say  that  Dr.  Channing's 
influence  was  either  such  a  bulwark  in  defence  of  Chris- 
tianity itself  as  was  presented  by  the  learned  Lardner  or 
the  industrious  Norton  ;  we  cannot  claim  for  him  the  frank, 
philosophic  acumen  of  Priestley ;  we  cannot  say  that  he 
had  compelled  the  intellect  of  Christendom  to  reconsider 
any  cardinal  dogma,  in  the  same  way  as  Socinus  had  done 
with  regard  to  the  dogma  of  the  atonement.  But  this  we 
can  say:  that  in  all  the  Churches  around  he  has  made  men 
feel  that  there  was  something  grander  and  better,  something 
nobler  and   truer,  than  either  what  they  had  been  (igliting 


4SS  CllANNING    CENTENARY. 

for  or  fi!;hting  against.  He  lias  made  men  feel  that  Unitari- 
anism,  as  he  preached  it,  must  be  iaterpreted  as  a  witness, 
lofty  and  peerless,  for  spiritual  freedom,  for  Evangelical 
charity,  for  the  religion  of  Christ  Jesus  undefiled.  So  it  has 
happened  that  now,  a  hundred  years  after  his  birth,  we  find 
in  the  nations  round  about,  and  in  the  Churches,  whether 
orthodox  or  heterodox,  men  rising  up  to  pay  a  tribute  of 
reverent  homage  to.  the  works  and  services,  to  the  true 
and  Christian  spirit,  of  William  Ellery  Channing.  We 
know  that  in  Italy  this  very  day,  in  the  very  capital  of  the 
the  most  invincibly  orthodox  type  of  Christianity,  a  little 
band  of  noble  spirits,  with  the  Senator  Mamiani  at  their 
head,  assembles  to  bear  witness  to  the  emancipating  power 
of  Channing.  We  find  the  same  movement  as  far  off  as 
the  northern  snows  of  Iceland.  We  find  it  wherever  the 
English  language  is  read  and  Channing's  works  in  the 
original  form  are  accessible.  We  find  also  that  those  works 
have  been  honored  in  translations  to  an  extent  to  which 
no  other  v^^orks  have  been  honored,  except  the  Bible  and 
the  Pilgrim's  Progress.  Last  month  there  happened  in  the 
city  of  Buda-Pest  a  very  interesting  ceremony.  It  was  a 
wedding  between  the  son  of  the  Lord  Lieutenant  Daniel, 
one  of  the  leading  names  of  our  own  Transylvanian  Church, 
and  a  Roman  Catholic  lady.  The  ceremony  was  performed 
in  the  chief  church  of  the  Reformed  or  Calvinistic  body, 
lent  for  the  occasion  ;  and  the  officiating  minister  was  our 
own  Bishop  Ferencz.  Among  the  crowded  congregation 
who  witnessed  the  unwonted  spectacle  was  that  noble 
specimen  of  a  true  Christian  gentleman,  Bishop  Torok,  the 
Calvinistic  Bishop  of  Buda-Pest.  When  I  received  this 
very  morning  the  news  of  that  remarkable  incident,  it 
struck  me  as  possessing  some  features  of  an  augury.  Here 
was  the  marriage  of  Unitarian  truth  and  Catholic  piety, 
solemnized  amid  the  not  unmoved  or  unsympathetic  pres- 


CELEBRATION  AT  BELFAST.  489 

ence  of  the  Calvinistic  community.  This  was  the  very 
work  of  Charming.  It  was  not  merely  a  proclamation  of 
divine  truth,  it  was  the  wedding  of  this  with  Evangelical 
charity  and  with  social  righteousness.  When  we  con- 
template the  influence  and  power  of  such  a  life,  we  may 
take  courage  and  renew  our  hope.  Thinking  over  what 
our  great  ones  have  done  in  the  past,  we  may  go  forward, 
in  the  strength  of  God,  to  vindicate  the  spiritual  kingdom 
of  His  Son,  in  the  days  that  are  present  and  that  shall  be. 

The  resolution  was  passed  unanimously. 

John  Rogers,  Esq.,  moved  the  next  resolution  :  "  That, 
in  recording  our  sense  of  Dr.  Channing's  ceaseless  exertions 
through  the  pulpit  and  the  press,  in  the  cause  of  freedom, 
culture,  and  philanthropy,  we  rejoice  to  witness  the  con- 
tinual spread  of  principles  of  which  he  was  the  intrepid  and 
enthusiastic  advocate. 

General  Richmond,  United  States  Consul,  said  he  would 
not  follow  the  eloquent  example  of  those  who  had  preceded 
him,  but  should  merely  take  advantage  of  the  opportunity 
of  expressing  his  full  sympathy  with  the  objects  of  this 
meeting. 

Rev.  C.  J.  M'Alester  moved  the  fourth  resolution  : 
That  we  commend  the  public  spirit  which  has  achieved 
the  issue  of  a  centennial  shilling  edition  of  Channing's 
works,  and  regard  the  welcome  accorded  to  his  writings  in 
both  hemispheres  as  a  happy  omen  of  the  progressive  influ- 
ence of  high  thoughts,  fitly  embodied  in  a  captivating  liter- 
ary form. 


THE  CELEBRATION  AT  ABERDEEN. 


A  PUBLIC  meeting  was  held  on  Monday  evening,  April  5, 
in  Blackfriars  Street  Hall,  Aberdeen,  to  commemorate  the 
hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Dr.  William  Ellery 
Channing.  There  was  a  large  attendance  ;  and  Mr.  G.  T. 
Walters,  George  Street  Unitarian  Church,  occupied  the 
chair. 

The  Chairman,  in  introducing  the  proceedings,  intimated 
that  the  Rev.  Edward  Lang,  Dee  Street  Methodist  Church, 
who  had  intended  to  be  a  speaker  on  this  occasion,  was 
unavoidably  absent  ;  and  he  also  stated  that  the  invitations 
were  not  given  to  the  speakers,  nor  were  they  supposed  to 
be  accepted  on  any  ground  of  doctrinal  agreement,  but  on  a 
religious  sympathy  of  a  broad  and  liberal  kind. 

Mrs.  Caroline  A.  Soule,  President  of  the  American 
Women's  Universalist  Association,  gave  an  eloquent  address 
on  "The  Spirit  of  Channing's  Life."  She  said  the  name 
and  fame  of  Channing  had  been  familiar  to  her  from  her 
girlhood,  as  they  were  to  the  children  of  all  intelligent  Amer- 
ican families  ;  for,  however  much  people  might  differ  on  the 
other  side  of  the  sea  in  regard  to  the  correctness  of  Chan- 
ning's theology,  they  were  united  as  to  the  solemn  beauty  of 
his  life.  One  and  all  were  proud  of  their  countryman. 
They  loved  him  as  a  man,  they  admired  him  as  a  writer, 
they  respected  him  as  a  religious  teacher,  and  they  cher- 
ished  his    memory  as  that  of  one  who  never   failed   in   the 


CELEBRATION  AT  ABERDEEN.  49I 

hour  when  Truth  sounded  her  bugle  notes  to  come  to  the 
front,  and  bear  its  banner  into  the  very  thickest  of  the  con- 
flict. To  catch  thoroughly  the  spirit  of  Channing's  life,  they 
must  remember  somewhat  the  circumstances  of  his  birth. 
Born  while  the  war  of  the  Revolution  was  in  its  travail,  and 
born  of  patriotic  parents,  it  was  easy  to  see  that  his  spiritual 
inheritance  was  an  indomitable  love  of  freedom,  and  an 
equally  strong  hatred  of  all  that  was  enslaving.  The  boy 
who  had  seen  his  father  entertain  at  his  own  table  George 
Washington,  the  father  of  his  country,  could  scarcely  have 
other  than  that  spirit  which  would  fight  its  way  from  all 
trammels,  secular  or  religious,  and  rise  up  as  on  eagle's 
wings  to  the  clear  sky  of  victory, —  victory  over  all  that  was 
false  or  little  or  low,  all  that  was  unworthy  of  a  child  of 
God.  The  spirit  of  that  life,  whose  birth  they  now  com- 
memorated, was  broad,  bold,  brave,  bounteous,  benevolent, 
and  beautiful ;  and,  if  they  read  his  life  carefully,  they  would 
not  be  able  to  find  a  single  page  on  which  they  could  not 
mark  the  one  or  the  other  of  these.  Besides  the  circum- 
stances of  his  birth,  to  catch  thoroughly  his  spirit,  they 
must  remember  that  his  parents  were  both  individuals  of 
rare  natural  gifts.  Channing,  though  comparatively  poor  at 
birth  in  this  world's  goods,  had  yet  a  grand  inheritance, — 
gold  that  could  not  be  stolen,  jewels  that  could  not  be  lost. 
Inheriting  from  his  parents  a  character  that  was  spotless, 
and  from  his  country  one  that  was  noble,  they  might  say, 
without  irreverence,  he  inherited  a  portion  of  the  kingdom 
of  God,  which  was  inward  righteousness,  peace,  and  joy. 
Mrs.  Soule  said  the  predominating  qualities  of  Channing's 
life  might  be  seen  in  his  boyhood  ;  and,  after  noticing  his 
early  life,  she  went  on  to  speak  of  his  maturcr  history. 
Singularly  free  from  bigotry  and  prejudice,  he  was  an  ardent 
yet  consistent  advocate  for  religious  liberty.  Broad  in  his 
own  views,  he    still    would    not    force    them    upon  any  one, 


492  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

believing  that  it  was  the  right  of  every  individual  to  exert 
and  exercise  his  own  faculties  in  the  investigation  of  relig- 
ious truth.  He  abhorred  a  sectarian  spirit  ;  he  labored  not 
so  much  to  build  up  a  church  as  the  Church,  the  Church 
of  Christ,  not  to  develop  the  truth  of  a  sect,  but  the  truth  of 
God.  Yet,  when  the  time  came  for  him  to  reveal  his  convic- 
tions on  any  point  of  theological  inquiry,  he  was  bold  and 
brave,  yet  ever  magnanimous ;  rejecting  decidedly  those 
views  which  seemed  to  him  erroneous,  but  never  believing 
that  error  was  guilt.  He  made  a  distinction  also  between 
his  opponent  and  his  "opponent's  views.  The  latter,  if  they 
seemed  wrong,  he  was  bound  in  honor  as  an  apostle  of  truth 
to  contradict  and  to  discuss,  yet  he  was  courteous  and 
gentle  to  the  man  in  error.  Channing  was  a  free  giver  in 
his  thoughts,  and  also  a  free  giver  in  material  things.  The 
beauty  of  -his  spirit  was  seen  in  his  generosity  to  his  oppo- 
nents, in  his  sympathy  with  the  suffering,  in  his  tenderness 
to  the  sinful,  and  in  his  self-consecration  to  what  he  con- 
ceived to  be  the  duties  of  a  Christian  minister.  His  ideal 
was  high  :  perhaps  the  world  has  not  seen  one  higher  than 
that. 

The  Rev.  Joseph  Vickery,  Blackfriars  Street  Congrega- 
tional Church,  gave  an  address  on  "  Channing  as  a  Social 
Reformer."  He  said  it  was  the  great  merit  of  Channing, 
born  on  the  eve  of  that  great  French  Revolution  which  was 
to  shake  all  nations,  that  he  was  among  the  first  to  catch 
that  new  spirit  of  freedom  and  inquiry,  and  to  apply  it  to  the' 
consideration  of  practical  questions.  In  his  very  youth,  he 
caught  all  the  ardor  and  patriotic  aspiration  of  that  new 
period,  and  the  glow  of  it  never  died  away  from  his  face. 
Channing's  position  in  regard  to  all  questions  of  social  re- 
form and  progress  is  best  expressed  by  the  emphasis  which 
he  constantly  laid  upon  the  action  of  the  individual.  He 
had  a  distrust,  which  was  perhaps  too  great,  in   the  mere 


CELEBRATION  AT  ABERDEEN.  493 

machinery  of  philanthropy ;  and  he  was  perhaps  somewhat 
disposed  to  underrate  the  action  of  wise  governing  poUcies 
upon  the  condition  of  society.  And  yet  it  is  impossible,  in 
the  reading  of  his  speeches,  his  letters,  and  his  various 
schemes,  not  to  perceive  that  he  had  clearly  recognized  and 
firmly  grasped  the  one  principle  which,  more  than  all  other 
principles,  lies  at  the  heart  of  social  progress.  Reformation 
must  begin  from  within,  and  in  this  respect  Channing's 
ideas  of  social  reform  are  pre-eminently  Christian.  But  it 
was  not  less  characteristic  of  Channing's  attitude  to  society 
as  a  reformer  that  in  all  his  ideas  his  aim  was  constructive 
rather  than  destructive.  He  recognized  in  the  ascendency 
of  every  institution,  however  evil  or  objectionable  in  certain 
of  its  features,  the  outcome  of  conflicting  motives  of  a  com- 
plex society.  The  true  policy  of  reform  is  to  see  not  how 
much  we  can  cut  away,  but  how  much  we  can  save.  To 
understand  the  social  questions  which  confront  us,  we  must 
trace  them  to  their  origin.  Not  only  by  temperament,  but 
by  conviction,  Channing  was  opposed  to  all  indiscriminating 
attacks  upon  the  evils  and  errors  of  society.  He  knew  both 
the  danger  and  the  error  of  uncritical  reform.  His  social 
radicalism  was  deep  and  fervent ;  but  it  was  a  radicalism 
which  took  a  wide  survey  of  the  conditions  of  human  life, 
and  made  large  allowance  for  the  infirmities  and  ignorance 
of  men.  In  the  firmness,  yet  moderation  and  breadth,  with 
which  he  held  and  expressed  his  principles,  in  his  clear 
recognition  of  the  real  difficulties  at  the  root  of  our  social 
troubles  and  disorders,  in  his  healthy  and  genuinely  Chris- 
tian trust  in  the  inherent  goodness  of  human  nature,  in  his 
preference  for  a  moral  and  religious  policy  rather  than  for 
what  is  purely  political  and  mechanical,  Channing  was  admi- 
rable. He  (Mr.  Vickery)  joined  in  the  praise  of  Channing 
that  evening,  because  he  was  not  only  an  illustrious  member 
of  the  society  of  Christ  and  God,  but  because  throughout  liis 


494  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

spotless  career  he  was  entirely  faithful  to  that  policy  of 
progress  which  he  believed  to  be  the  only  one  which  is 
supremely  true  and  divine. 

The  Chairman  spoke  on  "  Channing's  Influence  on 
the  Future  of  Humanity,"  and  said  that  Thomas  Carlyle 
had  given  us  the  hero  as  divinity,  as  prophet,  as  priest, 
etc.,  but  not  the  hero  as  a  saint.  Amid  the  struggles, 
the  hopes,  and  fears  of  mortal  men,  there  was  room  for  a 
type  of  heroism  such  as  that.  If  by  the  word  "saint" 
they  might  mean  one  who  sought  to  purify  the  world 
from  its  sin  and  shame,  and  to  make  life  glorious  by  truth, 
devotion,  and  love,  then  William  Ellery  Channing  might 
stand,  for  them,  the  hero  as  a  saint.  And  how  did  such 
men  influence  the  world  ?  They  did  not  cause  a  great 
and  sudden  commotion.  They  did  not  shake  the  pillars 
of  an  Empire.  Their  influence  was  of  a  gentler  kind, 
rather  to  be  compared  to  the  subtle  breath  of  spring, 
which  calls  forth  flowers  and  grass  to  make  joyful  the  dark, 
sad,  wintry  soil.  With  reference  to  Channing's  influence 
upon  the  religious  future  of  humanity,  Mr.  Walters  said 
that  he  believed  that  many  had  been  delivered  from  a 
hard,  selfish  dogmatism,  and  prejudices  had  been  removed. 
Channing  was  a  Unitarian ;  and  people  who  had  been 
trained,  as  he  (Mr.  Walters)  had,  to  regard  that  word  with 
the  utmost  horror,  found  when  reading  Channing's  works 
that  a  Unitarian  might  be  a  sincerely  pious  and  good  man, 
might  be  a  Christian  in  that  very  highest  sense  of  the  term, 
which  means  Christ-like.  Things  could  not  remain  as  they 
were.  People  were  beginning  to  ask  why  theological  differ- 
ences should  divide  men  of  earnestness  and  faith,  why  the 
great  cause  of  civilization  and  progress  should  be  checked 
by  reason  of  jealousy  or  suspicion  between  various  men, 
who,  whatever  their  doctrinal  differences  might  be,  were 
striving  to  win   the  world  to  a  nobler  and   purer  life.     In 


CELEBRATION  AT  ABERDEEN.  495 

the  future,  then,  the  Churches  of  Christendom  would  realize 
that  there  was  something  more  truly  precious  than  creeds 
and  formularies, —  that  the  distinctions  of  sect  were  but 
mean  and  paltry  in  the  sight  of  Him  who  gathered  to  his 
side  the  beggar  and  the  outcast,  and  who  enunciated  in  the 
surprised  hearing  of  a  Samaritan  woman  the  grandest  prin- 
ciple of  religious  faith,  that  the  true '  worshipper  should 
worship  the  Father  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  The  influence 
of  Channing  would  also  save  many  from  drifting  away 
into  the  extremes  of  Materialism  and  Atheism.  This  ser- 
vice would  not  be  less  than  the  other.  Over  the  stormy 
seas  of  controversy,  while  the  waves  of  sectarian  passion 
roll  and  break,  while  theories  of  extreme  partisans  dash 
in  vain  tumult  and  perpetual  babble,  the  light  of  Channing's 
faith  will  shine  as  from  the  light-house  top,  will  calmly  assert, 
through  the  dark  and  stormy  night,  the  perpetual  love  of 
God ;  and,  from  age  to  age,  many  a  human  soul  struggling 
through  life  shall  be  guided  to  the  harbor  where  every 
sorrow  and  every  pain  shall  be  hushed  in  the  eternal 
peace. 

Mr.  Robert  Adams,  flesher,  moved  a  vote  of  thanks 
to  the  lady  and  gentlemen  speakers  for  their  eloquent 
addresses. 

Mr.  William  Lindsay,  in  seconding  the  motion,  sug- 
gested that  they  should  have  a  standing  committee,  that, 
year  after  year  as  the  birthday  of  Channing  came  round, 
would  enable  them  to  meet  and  consider  and  reflect  upon 
the  great  and  glorious  work  that  that  great  man  had  done 
for  the  world. 

The  vote  was  heartily  accorded,  and  the  proceedings 
shortly  afterward  terminated. 


TRIBUTES  OF  THE  EUROPEAN  PRESS. 


From  the  London  Daily  News. 

The  meeting  at  St.  James'  Hall  last  night,  to  celebrate 
the  centenary  of  the  birth  of  Dr.  Channing,  was  wisely  not 
limited  to  those  who  share  his  religious  views.  The  founder 
of  New  England  Unitarianism,  like  his  predecessor  and 
sometime  contemporary,  Dr.  Priestley,  was  too  large  and 
wide  a  man  for  his  best  influence  to  be  limited  to  any  relig- 
ious sect.  He  may,  perhaps,  be  longest  remembered  as  the 
great  preacher  of  doctrines  then  regarded  as  new  and  strik- 
ing ;  but  his  place  in  the  history  of  the  United  States  is  in 
some  degree  independent  of  his  position  in  the  history  of 
opinion.  The  writings  on  which  his  theological  reputation 
rests  have  perhaps  a  wider  fame,  and  certainly  a  far  larger 
audience,  than  his  more  purely  literary  efforts  ;  but  it  is  by 
his  moral  and  social  influence  that  he  did  most  for  his  coun- 
try. Dr.  Channing  was  one  of  the  makers  of  New  England. 
He  it  was,  more  perhaps  than  any  other  man,  who  widened 
and  transformed  its  narrow  and  provincial  life.  He  found  it 
colonial,  and  left  it  national.  He  not  only  made  Boston  the 
centre  of  the  religious  views  of  which  he  was  the  most  elo- 
quent exponent,  but  helped  to  make  it  the  intellectual  capital 
of    the    United   States.      The    War    of    Independence   was 


TRIBUTES    OF    THE    EUROPEAN    PRESS.  497 

brought  to  an  end  while  he  was  still  a  child,  and  he  went  as 
a  youth  of  fourteen  to  Harvard  while  Washington  was  in 
the  second  term  of  his  Presidency.  Neither  the  troubles 
nor  the  successes  of  the  future  Republic  had  then  begun. 
When  Channing  went  to  Boston  as  a  young  preacher,  in 
1803,  the  opinion  of  the  chief  politicians  of  the  young 
nation  was  that  slavery  would  die  out  in  the  air  of  freedom. 
The  States  of  Tennessee,  Kentucky,  and  Vermont  had  just 
been  added  to  the  Union  ;  and,  in  that  very  year,  the  coun- 
try beyond  the  Mississippi  had  been  added  to  the  territories 
of  the  Republic  by  purchase  from  France.  It  was  a  time  of 
intense  mental  activity  in  the  newly  liberated  States.  There 
was  a  reaction  from  political  anxieties,  which  seemed  to  have 
been  set  at  rest,  toward  social  and  theological  problems. 
We  may  pass  over  the  religious  controversies  which  then 
raged  in  New  England,  though  they  claim  a  passing  notice, 
because  it  was  as  one  of  the  founders  of  "  the  Boston  relig- 
ion," as  it  was  called,  that  Channing  was  first  known  to 
fame.  It  was  in  somewhat  later  years,  after  these  contro- 
versies had  settled  down,  and  the  Federal  Street  Church 
was  regarded  with  pride  by  men  who  did  not  share  the  relig- 
ious views  inculcated  from  its  pulpit,  that  Channing's  larger 
influence  began.  His  celebrated  Review  of  the  correspond- 
ence between  President  Adams  and  some  supposed  oppo- 
nents of  the  Federal  Union  in  Massachusetts  was  published 
in  1829.  It  was  an  eloquent  and  exhaustive  statement  of 
the  reasons  why  the  Union  should  be  cherished  as  the  guar- 
antee and  the  guardian  of  American  freedom.  In  this  strik- 
ing essay,  he  foreshadowed  in  some  degree,  and  probably 
did  much  to  foster  and  increase,  that  devotion  to  the  Union 
which  thirty  years  after  his  death  took  up  the  Southern  chal- 
lenge and  destroyed  slavery  to  save  the  Federal  Government 
from  dissolution. 

It  was  not  foreseen  in  Channing's  early  days  that  cither 
33 


498  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

the  Union  on  the  one  hand,  or  slavery  on  the  other,  would 
become  objects  of  passionate  attachment.  Channing's  own 
chief  political  service  to  his  country  arose  out  of  the  aggres- 
siveness of  slavery  rather  than  from  any  aggressive  attitude 
on  his  part  toward  slavery.  He  regarded  his  chief  work  as 
lying  outside  politics  ;  and,  though  he  held  and  taught  anti- 
slavery  doctrines,  he  did  not  join  the  early  anti-slavery  move- 
ment. What  Miss  Martineau  calls  the  Martyr  Age  of 
American  freedom  does  not  form  part  of  Channing's  life. 
His  doctrine  of  the  dignity  of  human  nature  was  inconsist- 
ent with  all  slavery,  but  he  was  content  at  first  to  leave  its 
practical  application  to  that  particular  evil  to  the  gradual 
operation  of  the  public  sense  of  right  and  justice.  But 
slavery  soon  found  that  it  must  have  room  or  die.  The  early 
founders  of  the  Republic  had  been  justified  in  their  belief 
that  it  would  not  hold  its  own  in  a  free  State,  but  they  did 
not  know  that  new  lands  would  open  out  on  all  sides  over 
which  it  might  spread.  Channing,  like  many  other  men  of 
quiet  and  gentle  nature,  held  aloof  from  the  early  denouncers 
of  what  Garrison  called  "the  covenant  with  hell."  He 
seems  to  have  hoped  that  the  South  would  be  more  likely  to 
abolish  it,  if  they  were  reasoned  with  than  if  they  were  de- 
nounced. He  proved  to  be  wrong,  or  circumstances  disap- 
pointed his  expectation.  But  when  the  slave-owners  over- 
flowed into  Mexican  territory,  and  it  was  proposed  to  steal 
Texas  from  that  neighboring  republic  in  order  to  add  another 
slave  State  to  the  Union,  Channing  wrote  Mr.  Clay  a  protest 
against  the  proposed  act  of  national  dishonesty,  which  post- 
poned, though  it  could  not  prevent,  the  crime.  He  was  dead 
when  the  annexation  was  at  last  accomplished ;  but  his  pro- 
tests against  the  threatened  war,  and  the  almost  prophetic 
tone  of  his  warning,  had  already  done  much  to  rouse  the 
conscience  of  the  nation.  This,  indeed,  was  Channing's 
great  political   service  to  his  own  and  the  immediately  fol- 


TRIBUTES    OF    THE    EUROPEAN    PRESS.  499 

lowing  times.  He  made  the  people  feel  that  a  nation  could 
not  do  injustice  without  suffering  for  it,  and  that  the  petty- 
cowardice  of  bullying  weak  neighbors  was  utterly  unworthy 
of  a  free  and  self-respecting  people.  If  he  was  late  in  publicly 
joining  the  anti-slavery  protest,  he,  at  least,  gave  it  efficient 
and  noble  help  when  at  last  he  was  induced  to  speak  ;  and  he 
planted  in  the  minds  of  the  people  of  New  England  a  sense 
of  national  responsibility  for  the  wrong-doings  of  the  gov- 
ernment, which  had  much  to  do  with  the  great  national 
uprising  he  did  not  live  to  see. 

Probably  some  disappointment  is  now  felt  by  many  who 
come  to  Channing's  writings  for  the  first  time,  by  the  ab- 
sence of  anything  which  at  once  strikes  them  as  original. 
It  is  difficult  to  realize  that  political  and  social  views  which 
are  now  the  common  possession  of  mankind  can  ever  have 
had  the  charm  of  novelty.  Nor,  indeed,  was  there  anything 
altogether  new  in  Channing's  doctrine  of  the  dignity  of  man 
as  man.  It  was  new  to  the  age  to  which  he  taught  it ;  and 
it  was  received  with  so  much  enthusiasm  because  the  time 
for  it  was  ripe.  It  is  the  appropriate  thought  of  a  demo- 
cratic age.  It  was  Channing's  merit,  moreover,  that  he 
applied  it  not  only  to  great  political  questions  like  that  of 
slavery,  but  to  social  difficulties.  In  the  America  and  in  the 
England  of  that  day,  it  had  scarcely  yet  occurred  to  reform- 
ers to  begin  with  the  habits  and  homes  of  the  people  them- 
selves. The  attempts  at  social  reform  took  the  shape  of 
socialistic  dreams, —  such  as  those  which  fascinated  Haw- 
thorne and  had  charmed  Channing  himself  in  his  earlier 
days.  But  it  was  his  great  service  to  give  these  efforts  a 
severely  practical  shape.  He  urged  the  improvement  of  the 
outward  circumstances  in  which  the  people  lived,  the  better- 
ing of  their  general  condition,  and  the  cleansing  and  briglit- 
ening  of  their  homes  as  a  direct  obj.cct  of  philanthropic 
effort.       The    educational    and    sanitary    movements    which 


500  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

characterize  the  present  century  had  scarcely  begun  even  in 
the  United  States  in  Channing's  boyhood;  and  they  owe 
much  of  their  impetus,  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  to  his 
teaching.  We  may  say  indeed  that  in  his  political  and 
social  writings  there  is  still  much  that  the  Americans  espe- 
cially need  to  learn.  In  the  essay  on  the  Union,  of  which 
we  have  already  spoken,  he  not  only  vindicates  republican 
government,  but  free  trade.  The  essay  was  written  in 
1S29,  and  anticipated  therefore  by  many  years  the  adoption 
of  free-trade  principles  in  this  country.  Even  at  that  early 
date,  he  tells  his  countrymen,  not  only  that  "every  custom- 
house should  be  shut  from  Maine  to  Louisiana,"  which  is 
one  of  his  arguments  for  the  Union,  but  that  "the  interests 
of  human  labor  require  that  every  fetter  should  be  broken 
from  the  intercourse  of  nations,  that  the  most  distant  nations 
should  exchange  all  their  products,  whether  of  manual  or  of 
intellectual  labor,  as  freely  as  the  members  of  the  same  com- 
munity." This  is  only  one  illustration  of  the  clearness  of 
his  intellectual  vision.  In  this  matter,  he  is  still  far  before 
the  great  bulk  of  his  countrymen ;  and  it  would  be  a  happy 
circumstance  if  the  new  attention  called  by  this  centenary 
celebration  to  his  writings  should  induce  his  own  countrymen 
to  learn  from  the  teacher  of  whom  they  have  such  just  rea- 
son to  be  proud  how,  in  his  own  words,  "  happy  it  would  be 
for  us  could  tariffs  be  done  away  with,  for  with  them  would 
be  abolished  fruitful  causes  of  national  jealousies,  of  war,  of 
perjury,  of  smuggling,  of  innumerable  frauds  and  crimes, 
and  of  harassing  restraint  on  that  commerce  which  should 
be  free  as  the  winds." 


TRIBUTES    OF    THE    EUROPEAN    PRESS.  50I 

From  the  Inquirer. 

Channing  was  a  great  and  good  man,  unquestionably ;  and 
his  labors  on  behalf  of  the  down-trodden  and  enslaved  will 
never  be  forgotten.  But  he  was  not  a  great  theologian  ; 
and,  while  he  promulgated  principles  of  the  highest  value,  it 
was  left  to  other  more  critical  minds  to  develop  them  accord- 
ing to  their  logical  and  inevitable  tendencies.  Channing 
began  his  career  as  an  Arian  and  a  somewhat  rigid  su- 
pernaturalist.  Toward  the  close  of  his  life,  his  Arianism 
merged  into  that  larger  Humanitarianism  which  regards 
"all  minds  as  of  one  family";  while  his  supernaturalism, 
although  not  absolutely  discarded,  was  entirely  subordinated 
to  a  deeper  faith  in  the  moral  and  spiritual  principles  of 
Christianity. 

In  the  chorus  of  eulogies  on  Channing, —  all  good  and 
true  in  the  main, —  it  is  well  that  we  should  bear  in  mind  his 
limitations  as  a  thinker,  and  beware  of  the  danger,  which  he 
himself  would  have  been  the  foremost  to  deprecate,  of  set- 
ting up  a  "  Channing  school,"  or  making  him  an  authority 
to  be  followed  with  servile  allegiance,  even  where  he  is  least 
logical  and  least  self-consistent.  The  Pall  Mall  Gazette ^ 
which  is  nothing  if  it  is  not  critical,  and  which  although  con- 
servative in  politics  is  rationalistic  in  theology,  points  out,  in 
an  article  we  have  quoted  elsewhere,  that  it  can  hardly  be 
claimed  for  Channing  that  his  sincere  and  steadfast  attempts 
to  reconcile  the  problems  of  religious  philosophy  were  at- 
tended with  much  success.  He  eliminated  from  the  popular 
conception  of  Christianity  everything  that  offended  his  rea- 
son and  moral  sense,  but  he  retained  those  miraculous  ele- 
ments which  have  formed  the  chief  difficulty  of  modern 
criticism.  Our  .Sadducean  contemporary  remarks,  with  some 
truth,  that  in  holding  this  position  he  either  went  too  far  or 
did  not  go  far  enough.     "  If  we  accept  a  miraculous  system, 


50J  CHANNING    CENTENARY.  ^ 

we  arc  bound  to  believe  that  it  has  been  introduced  into  the 
world  for  some  adequate  reason  :  it  must  be  associated  with 
a  body  of  doctrine,  to  which  the  human  mind  would  not 
have  risen  by  its  own  unaided  powers.  What  Channing 
called  Christianity  cannot  possibly  be  regarded  as  a  body  of 
doctrine  of  this  nature  :  it  was  made  up  of  a  few  beliefs, 
which  may  easily  be  held  wdthout  supernatural  sanctions. 
And  we  may  add  that  it  has  much  less  power  to  move  the 
common  mass  of  men  than  the  so-called  orthodox  creed  in 
almost  any  of  its  shapes.  Unitarians  dilate  in  vain  on  the 
superiorit}"  of  a  purely  spiritual  faith  ;  for,  although  they  may 
appeal  wdth  effect  to  a  limited  class,  ordinary  people  are  un- 
touched by  truths  which  are  incapable  of  sensuous  repre- 
sentation." 

Grillparzer  has  said  that  "  religion  is  the  poetry  of  unpo- 
etical  natures."  The  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  without  altogether 
adopting  this  epigram,  maintains  that  a  religion  cannot  be 
popular  which  does  not  possess  poetical  qualities,  and  that 
there  are  poetical  qualities  —  of  a  kind  —  in  the  ideas  not 
only  of  Catholicism,  but  even  of  despised  Calvinism.  Chan- 
ning's  answer  would  be  that  these  ideas  are  incredible ;  but 
it  is  an  obvious  retort,  adds  our  contemporary,  that  if  a  man 
is  prepared  to  accept  miracles,  he  may,  without  much  hesita- 
tion, accept  a  great  deal  more.  "  Dans  cette  voie,"  says  M. 
Renan,  "  il  n'y  a  que  le  premier  pas  qui  coute." 

It  is  no  disparagement  of  Channing's  real  eminence  in 
another  field  than  that  of  critical  and  scientific  theology,  to 
say  that  in  dealing  with  the  question  of  miracles  he  quite 
failed  to  perceive  the  character  which  the  controversy  had 
assumed  even  in  his  day.  He  knew  too  little  of  physical 
science  to  understand  the  full  force  of  the  objection  drawn 
from  the  uniformity  of  nature  ;  and  he  did  not  give  sufficient 
attention  to  the  great  critical  movement  in  Germany,  which 
began  with  Lessing,  and  found  its  most  important  represen- 
tatives in  Strauss  and  the  Tubingen  school. 


TRIBUTES    OF    THE    EUROPEAN    PRESS.  503 

But,  as  we  have  often  had  occasion  of  late  to  remark, 
Channing's  work  was  that  of  the  prophet  and  social  reformer, 
not  that  of  the  critical  and  scientific  theologian.  The 
questions  referred  to  above  came  to  the  front  in  America 
and  England,  only  among  a  very  limited  class  of  thinkers 
and  students  of  German  theology,  toward  the  close  of  his 
career.  It  was  his  one  conspicuous  merit  as  a  divine  that 
he  recognized  the  principle  of  growth  in  theology  as  well  as 
in  every  other  department  of  inquiry.  His  mind  was  never 
closed  to  new  questions  ;  and  his  attitude  was  exactly  the 
reverse  of  that  of  the  conservative  old-school  theologian, 
who  can  recognize  truth  only  when  it  is  clad  in  its  old,  well- 
worn  garb. 

This  largeness  and  comprehensiveness  of  Channing's 
mental  position  is  clearly  brought  out  in  a  delightful  little 
book  which  has  just  been  published  in  Boston,  by  the  Rev. 
C.  T.  Brooks,  so  well  known  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic 
as  the  now  venerable  "poet-preacher"  of  America.  The 
book  makes  no  pretensions  to  a  complete  biography,  but  is 
rather  "a  Centennial  Memory"  from  the  pen  of  one  who, 
as  the  minister  for  forty  years  of  the  Unitarian  church  of 
Newport,  R.I.,  was  brought  into  close  contact  with  Channing, 
and  has  many  interesting  personal  reminiscences  to  recount, 
which  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  more  elaborate  biographies, 
whether  English  or  French.  Mr.  Brooks'  little  work  has 
the  additional  charm  of  several  illustrations,  including,  as 
the  frontispiece,  the  best  photograph  of  Channing  we  have 
ever  seen,  together  with  a  likeness  of  Channing  as  a  young 
student,  after  a  sketch  by  Malbone  ;  a  portrait  of  his  mother, 
in  which  we  trace  a  remarkable  resemblance  to  her  son  ;  and 
illustrations  of  Federal  Street  Church,  Boston, —  the  scene 
of  his  earlier  ministry, —  and  his  residences  at  various  pe- 
riods in  Rhode  Lsland.  Altogether,  it  is  an  invaluable  sup- 
plement to  the  more  elaborate  Memoir  by  W.  II.  Channing, 


504  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

and  a  delightful  introduction   to  the  study  of  the  life  and 
works  of  the  great  American  divine. 

One  thing  is  evident  from  these  reminiscences :  that  Chan- 
ning  was  more  of  a  mystic  and  a  rationalist,  in  the  best 
sense  of 'both  words,  than  a  Unitarian  in  the  old  sense  of 
the  term.  At  all  times,  he  disliked  controversy,  which  was 
forced  upon  him  as  a  painful  necessity,  and  always  protested 
against  sectarian  bonds  and  limitations  in  any  form.  His 
favorite  thought  is  that  Christianity  is  a  temper  and  spirit 
rather  than  a  doctrine ;  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man 
rather  than  a  creed  or  a  ceremonial ;  a  principle  uprooting 
every  doctrine  which  dishonors  God  and  man.  As  Dr.  Fur- 
ness  well  said,  "  It  was  not  by  doctrinal  preaching,  but  by 
the  precepts  of  the  New  Testament,  that  a  great  change  in 
opinion  was  wrought  in  New  England.  It  was  practical 
preaching  that  worked  a  doctrinal  change."  We  find  Chan- 
ning  himself  complaining,  toward  the  close  of  the  more 
controversial  period  of  his  ministry,  that  Unitarianism  "  has 
suffered  from  a  too  exclusive  application  of  its  advocates  to 
Biblical  criticism  and  theological  controversy,  from  a  too 
partial  culture  of  the  mind."  The  progress  of  philosophy 
had  not  then  widened  the  great  issue  in  the  religious  contro- 
versy of  his  time,  from  the  question,  what  God's  Word  says, 
to  the  deeper  question  of  these  latter  days,  where  God's 
Word  is  to  be  sought.  But,  practically,  as  Mr.  Brooks  testi- 
fies, Channing  was  already  for  himself  answering,  "  Not  in 
Scripture  alone,  but  in  reason  and  nature."  His  Arian 
theories,  if  not  altogether  discarded,  at  least  dropped  into 
subordination  to  more  important  principles.  In  a  letter  to 
Joanna  Baillie,  in  183 1,  he  writes  :  "  For  years,  I  have  felt  a 
decreasing  interest  in  settling  the  precise  rank  of  Jesus 
Christ.  The  power  of  his  character  seems  to  me  to  be  in 
his  spotless  purity,  his  moral  perfection,  and  not  in  the  time 
during  which  he  has  existed.     I   have  attached  less   impor- 


TRIBUTES    OF    THE    EUROPEAN    PRESS.  505 

tance  to  this  point  from  having  learned  that  all  minds  are  of 
one  family, —  that  the  human  and  the  angelic  natures  are 
essentially  one."  As  he  advanced  in  years,  Channing  grew 
in  catholicity.  And,  when  he  said  that  he  was  "little  of  a 
Unitarian,"  he  meant  that  he  was  more  and  more  a  Chris- 
tian ;  in  fact,  more  and  more  a  man,  which  was  earlier  and 
greater  than  either.  As  Theodore  Parker  wrote,  in  what  he 
modestly  styled  his  "  Humble  Tribute,"  "  This  must  be  said 
of  Channing  :  that,  if  he  was  slow  in  coming  to  the  principles 
and  method  of  a  liberal  theolog}^  he  never  forsook  them,  but 
went  further  than  his  former  friends  to  serve  conclusions 
logically  unavoidable,  but  now  [then]  vehemently  denied." 
And  as  Mr.  Brooks  well  adds,  with  a  significant  lesson  to 
many  who  claim  to  be  of  "  the  school  of  Channing  "  :  "  If 
they  who  have  departed  from  certain  of  Channing's  opinions, 
who  have  become  more  Humanitarian,  more  of  Restoration- 
ists,  more  of  Naturalists  than  he,  as  regards  speculative 
doctrine,  are  set  down  as  recreant  to  Channing  Unitarianism, 
the  reproach  shows  a  grievous  failure  to  perceive  what  were 
the  Unitarian  principles  dearest  to  Channing's  heart." 

Finally,  as  to  the  creed  question,  which  still  unfortunately 
comes  up  among  Unitarians,  who  can  doubt  what  Channing's 
attitude  would  have  been  .''  Mr.  Brooks,  his  intimate  friend, 
and  the  close  companion  of  his  later  years,  bears  uncom- 
promising testimony  on  this  point,  in  a  section  which  wc 
must  give  in  full  as  the  conclusion  of  this  article :  — 

"When,  a  few  years  ago,  that  memorable  crisis  came  in 
the  history  of  our  Unitarian  fellowship,  at  which  it  was 
thought  by  some  to  be  high  time  that  we  should  take  a  new 
departure, —  that  we  should  give  up  the  good  old  plan  of 
lengthening  the  cords  of  the  fellowship,  and  so  strengthen- 
ing the  stakes  of  faith, —  that  we  should  put  ourselves  into 
uniform,  so  as  to  know  ourselves  and  make  ourselves  known, 
—  in  other  words,  and  without  a  figure,  that  we  should,  at 


5o6  CIIANNING    CENTENARY. 

our  National  Conference,  adopt  a  creed,  and  make  ourselves 
more  distinctively  and  decidedly  a  sect, —  who  can  doubt,  if 
Channini;-  had  been  still  among  us,  what  would  have  been 
his  mind  and  word  in  the  matter, —  what  he  would  have 
thought  and  said,  who,  so  often  and  so  earnestly,  in  his  last 
years,  and  in  the  growing  light  of  the  eternal  life,  empha- 
sized the  superiority  of  the  inward  and  spiritual  drawing  to 
any  outward  and  formal  binding,  as  means  and  motives  of 
Christian  union ;  arguing  that  though  in  this  way  the  benefit 
of  aiithority  might  be  lost,  and  the  unity  of  the  sect  threat- 
ened, still  no  unity  was  '  of  any  worth,  except  the  attraction 
subsisting  among  those  who  hold,  not  nominally,  but  really, 
not  in  words,  but  with  profound  conviction  and  love,  the 
same  g:reat  truths.'  " 


From  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette. 

The  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Channing  will 
be  celebrated  this  evening  in  public  meetings  by  a  large 
number  of  people  in  the  United  States,  and  by  a  considera- 
ble number  even  in  England.  Celebrations  of  this  kind  are 
as  a  rule  very  unwisely  conducted  ;  but,  as  Channing's  admir- 
ers belong  to  a  well-educated  class,  it  may  be  assumed  that 
most  of  the  speeches  in  his  honor  will  be  marked  by  intelli- 
gence and  good  taste.  He  is  known  in  this  country  mainly 
as  the  representative  of  American  Unitarianism,  but  he 
himself  disliked  to  be  closely  identified  with  any  particular 
sect.  He  was  willing  to  be  called  a  Unitarian,  he  some- 
where says,  merely  because  the  name  was  to  some  extent 
one  of  reproach.  One  of  his  leading  ideas,  indeed,  was  that 
sects  have,  on  the  whole,  exerted  a  pernicious  influence.  In 
nearly  all  his  religious  discourses,  he  gives  expression  to  this 


TRIBUTES    OF    THE    EUROPEAN    I'RESS.  507 

conviction,  insisting  that  his  readers  must  not  regard  his 
opinions  as  more  than  the  conclusions  of  a  soHtary  thinker, 
and  that,  if  they  wish  to  arrive  at  a  decision  on  the  questions 
he  discusses,  they  are  bound  to  investigate  the  evidence  for 
themselves.  And  he  placed  no  limits  on  the  freedom  of 
criticism.  Every  belief,  no  matter  how  it  might  be  sanc- 
tioned by  tradition,  was  to  be  examined  afresh  in  the  light  of 
modern  knowledge,  and  doctrines  for  which  no  adequate 
foundation  could  be  discovered  were  to  be  fearlessly  aban- 
doned. In  this  teaching,  Channing  was,  of  course,  simply  a 
consistent  Protestant,  carrying  the  principles  of  the  Reforma- 
tion to  their  legitimate  conclusion  ;  but,  at  the  time  when  he 
began  his  public  career,  it  was  teaching  which  had  hardly  ob- 
tained a  hearing  in  the  United  States.  Until  about  the  begin- 
ning of  the  present  century,  the  religion  which  dominated 
the  American  people  was  the  narrowest  form  of  Puritanism. 
Departure  from  the  system  of  Calvin  was  considered  to  be 
not  so  much  a  mistake  as  a  crime,  and  heretics  were  visited 
with  the  heaviest  social  penalties.  The  inevitable  conse- 
quence was  almost  intellectual  stagnation.  Men  of  talent 
were  afraid  to  enter  upon  inquiries  which  might  lead  to  in- 
convenient results,  and  in  every  department  of  thought 
ignored  facts  and  arguments  that  seemed,  even  in  a  remote 
degree,  to  conflict  with  accepted  dogmas.  Channing  did 
essential  service  to  his  country  by  casting  discredit  on  this 
intolerant  temper.  He  was  not  the  first  American  who 
spoke  clearly  and  strongly  in  favor  of  free  investigation,  but 
he  was  the  first  to  do  so  in  a  manner  which  attracted  general 
attention,  and  which  commanded  the  respect  of  the  most 
thoughtful  section  of  the  community.  He  had  too  little  of 
the  historic  spirit  to  understand  that  every  phase  of  serious 
religious  belief  has  corresponded  to  real  necessities  of  human 
nature  at  particular  stages  of  development,  but  his  love  of 
liberty  made  him  remarkably  fair  in  his  treatment  of  opinions 


50S  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

with  which  he  himself  did  not  agree.  American  Protestants 
were  astonished  to  learn  that  in  his  view  Catholicism  was 
not  simply  a  monstrous  system  of  superstition.  He  even 
insisted  that  the  Catholic  Church  has  a  much  better  right 
than  any  Protestant  sect  to  claim  infallibility ;  and  in  his 
admirable  essay  on  Fenelonhe  took  occasion  to  show  that, 
under  certain  conditions,  it  is  capable  of  producing  very 
rare  and  beautiful  types  of  character.  There  are  indications 
that  he  could  also  appreciate  some  aspects  of  the  great  Ori- 
ental religions.  To  Calvinism  alone,  he  was  a  little  unjust; 
but  this  was  perhaps  to  be  expected  from  the  peculiar  nature 
of  what  Mr.  Spencer  would  call  his  "environment." 


From  statements  in  the  English  papers,  we  suppose  there 
were  public  meetings  in  honor  of  Channing  in  several  cities 
of  the  continent,  notably  at  Paris  and  Florence.  At  Leipzig, 
Mr.  John  Fretwell,  Jr.,  was  to  deliver  an  address  in  German. 

Mr.  Fretwell  has  recently  sent  to  Christian  Life  an  Eng- 
lish paraphrase  of  a  German  tribute  to  Channing,  which 
appeared  in  1868  in  Nippold's  Kirchengeschichte.  Nippold 
finds  the  chief  characteristic  of  Channing's  faith  to  be  "  the 
active  power  of  the  individual  conscience."  He  clothes  the 
old  rationalistic  trinity  of  God,  Virtue,  and  Immortality, 
with  a  beauty  unknown  to  the  rationalists,  and  has  impressed 
Unitarianism  with  gospel  freedom  as  well  as  Christian  piety. 
His  object  was  to  develop  self-conscious  energy  and  to  win 
obedience  for  the  inward  voice  of  God.  He  subordinates 
the  mystical  and  supernatural  to  the  ethical.  Jesus  is  not 
for  him  an  object  of  admiration  merely,  but  an  example  that 
we  may  follow.  His  death  has  a  practical  moral  value  :  he 
has  revealed  the  fatherly  Providence.      He  seeks  the  mani- 


TRIBUTES    OF    THE    EUROPEAN    PRESS.  509 

festation  of  Christian  character  not  in  sect  and  creed,  but  in 
the  spirit  and  life  of  professors.  He  hated  the  spirit  of  party 
and  of  intolerance  ;  he  felt  the  perils  of  associations,  yet 
acknowledged  their  proper  uses  ;  he  honored  the  quiet  influ- 
ence of  home  life  and  natural  relations.  In  seeking  to  ele- 
vate the  working  classes,  he  looks  first  to  their  moral,  next 
to  their  material  welfare.  In  all  practical  questions,  he  car- 
ries out  his  fundamental  principle, —  the  value  of  the  individ- 
ual soul.  His  virtue  is  not  passive,  but  active.  "  In  spite  of 
all  Channing's  critical,  speculative,  and  aesthetic  deficiencies, 
he  is  one  of  the  moral  heroes  of  our  century,  and  deserves 
to  be  called  'The  Unitarian  Saint.'  And  the  Unitarians  are 
worthy  of  their  hero.  While  Gieseler  praises  them  because 
they  have  won  back  to  Christianity  many  a  soul  alienated 
from  it  by  the  creeds  and  superstition  of  the  sects,  Wichern 
has  found  among  the  Unitarians  some  of  his  most  successful 
and  devoted  predecessors  in  the  works  of  practical  Christian 
love.  Even  Schaff,  who  regards  them  as  infidels,  is  obliged 
to  confess  that  they  are  as  generous  as  their  orthodox  neigh- 
bors. The  great  importance  of  Channing  is  now  recognized 
in  the  whole  civilized  world,  after  men  like  Edgar  Quinet  in 
France,  and  Bunsen  in  Germany,  have  drawn  attention 
to  it." — CJiristian  Rezister. 


The  one  hundredth  birthday  of  Dr.  Channing  was  cele- 
brated at  Hildesheim  by  a  crowded  public  meeting,  over 
which  Dr.  C.  Gotting,  member  of  the  Prussian  I'arliament, 
presided.  Dr.  Carl  Manchot  delivered  a  masterly  address 
on  the  life  and  influence  of  Channing.  He  said  that  many 
of  the  older  inhabitants  of  Bremen  (where  Dr.  Manchot  is 
pastor)  had  lived  in  New  England  in  Channing's  time,  and 
still   spoke   of  the   great    impression    made   on   them   by  his 


5IO  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

addresses  on  slavery.  On  Sunday,  April  ii,  Pastor  Man- 
chot  preached  in  the  Saint  Remberti  Church  of  Bremen,  on 
the  life  of  Dr.  Channing.  Telegrams  of  sympathy  were 
sent  to  the  Hildesheim  meeting  by  branches  of  the  German 
Protestant  Association  in  Berlin,  Bremen,  and  Elberfeld ; 
and  a  selection  from  the  works  of  the  American  Unitarian 
is  to  be  published  shortly  in  the  German  language. 


A  FRENCH  CATHOLIC  ON  CHANNING.* 


The  authorship,  the  contents,  and  the  occasion  of  this 
book  are  alike  remarkable.  It  appears  that  in  the  year  1871, 
just  after  the  close  of  that  war  which  with  terrible  sufferings 
delivered  France  from  the  unchristian  sway  of  Louis  Napo- 
leon, the  Society  of  Moral  and  Political  Science  offered  a 
prize  for  the  best  essay  on  Channing,  laying,  however,  spe- 
cial stress  on  those  aspects  of  Channing's  life  and  work 
which  would  be  appropriate  to  the  moral  needs  of  the 
French  people. 

Monsieur  Jules  Simon,  president  of  this  society,  said: 
"While  no  aspect  of  Channing's  work  should  be  altogether 
neglected,  it  is  not  necessary  to  lay  the  same  emphasis  on 
all.  For  instance,  his  controversial  and  abolitionist  writings 
have  little  interest  for  us ;  while  we  have  to  contend  with 
another  sort  of  slavery,  which  Channing  has  attacked  with 
incomparable  eloquence, —  the  slavery  of  ignorance  and  vice. 
It  is  as  the  adviser  of  the  people  that  Channing  has  attained 
an  unprecedented  sublimity  and  efficacy.  Supremely  de- 
voted to  the  loftiest  interests  of  the  human  soul,  he  pro- 
claims  his   grand  theme   in  a  language  full  of  fire,  with  a 

*  Channing  :  sa  Vie  et  sa  Doctrine  tl'apr6i  ses  dcrits  et  «a  correspoiiHance,  par  Rcni  I.avollee. 
Ouvrage  couronn^  par  I'Acadi-mie  des  Sciences  morales  et  politiques.     Paris,  1876. 


512  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

spirituality  at  once  ardent  and  practical.  Time  cannot 
weaken  the  force  of  his  apostolic  teachings,  which  deserve 
the  attention  of  all  nations." 

It  is  worthy  of  remark  that  the  author  of  the  prize  work, 
mentioned  at  the  head  of  this  article,  is  a  pious  Roman 
Catholic ;  and  it  will  interest  our  readers  if  we  quote  some 
passages  in  which  the  sympathy  between  the  Catholic  and 
Unitarian  is  most  strongly  expressed. 

"Channing's  attitude  toward  Catholicism,  if  not  absolutely 
sympathetic,  is  less  antagonistic  than  toward  Calvin." 

"He  had  found  among  the  great  classics  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  a  soul  as  lofty  as  his  own,  and  the  Boston 
pastor  entered  into  so  intimate  a  spiritual  relationship  toward 
the  holy  Archbishop  of  Cambrai  that  he  deserves  to  be  called 
the  American  Fenelon." 

After  a  few  pages,  attempting  to  defend  Catholicism 
against  the  reproaches  of  Channing,  Lavollee  goes  on  :  "  He 
would  seem  to  have  delineated  the  moral  portrait  of  Jesus, 
as  Fra  Angelico  painted  his  features  on  the  canvas,  in  tears 
and  adoration.  We  seek  in  vain  among  the  numerous  Works 
on  Christian  doctrine  a  more  lofty  inspiration  and  a  more 
true  and  profound  sentiment  of  that  moral  beauty  which 
places  Jesus  so  far  above  humanity." 

The  words  with  which  Lavollee  closes  the  only  controver- 
sial chapter  in  his  volume  are  no  less  characteristic  : — 

"  I  cannot  forget  all  that  separates  Channing  from  the 
Catholic  faith,  all  that  he  yet  needs  to  be  truly  a  Christian  in 
belief,  as  he  is  undoubtedly  one  in  sentiment.  But  we  can- 
not afford  in  these  times  to  quarrel  about  one  or  the  other 
article  of  the  Credo.  '  Without  being  faithless  to  our  own 
creed,  we  can  unite  with  Channing  in  being  Spiritualists 
against  the  Materialists,  Theists  and  Christians  as  against 
the  atheist  and  the  sceptic.  Otherwise,  we  may  have  to 
share  the  fate  of  the  Greeks  of  the  lower  empire,  who  were 


A  FRENCH  CATHOLIC  ON  CHANNING.  513 

discussing  theological  subtleties,  while  Mahomet  II.  was 
scaling  the  ramparts  of  Constantinople.'  " 

In  his  chapter  on  Channing  as  a  social  reformer,  he  says  : 

"  The  Internationale  (French  Communism)  is  no  more  a 
birth  of  yesterday  than  Prussia  itself,  and  its  excesses  in 
June  were  no  more  difficult  to  foresee  than  the  victory  of 
Sadowa.  '  But  why  was  the  triumph  of  anarchy  so  rapid 
and  easy  ?  Because  the  party  of  order  in  France  knew  as 
little  of  its  domestic  enemies  as  of  its  foreign  ones,  and 
neglected  to  disarm  them  by  timely  reforms.'  " 

After  applying  the  social  teachings  of  Channing  to  the 
present  state  of  society  in  France,  and  comparing  them  with 
Monseigneur  Mermillod's  similar  expressions,  and  those  of 
Guizot,  regarding  the  duty  of  the  Church  to  the  working- 
men  of  the  nineteenth  century,  he  quotes  from  M.  de  Re- 
musat's  Channing,  sa  Vie  et  ses  QLuvres,  a  letter  written  in 
1832  by  Channing  to  M.  de  Gerando,  on  the  proper  moral 
influence  of  France  in  modern  Europe  ;  and  speaking  of 
some  words  written  by  Channing,  a  few  days  later,  to  the 
sceptic,  M.  D.  Sismondi,  he  says  :  — 

"  Such  are  the  warnings  which  Channing  addressed  to 
France  in  the  time  of  her  prosperity  and  grandeur.  Shall 
we  neglect  them  now  in  the  days  of  our  misfortune  .''  " 

The  fifth  chapter  contains  interesting  contrasts  between 
Fenelon,  a  classic  writer  in  advance  of  his  times,  and  Chan- 
ning, the  thinker  and  child  of  his  times ;  F6nelon,  the  Cath- 
olic and  theologian,  and  Channing,  the  "  almost  Christian  " 
moralist.  He  contrasts  the  spiritual  Channing  with  the 
utilitarian  Franklin  ;  and,  after  a  quotation  from  Father  Gra- 
try's  La  Morale  et  la  Loi  de  V Histoire,  he  concludes  :  — 

"Are  these  words  the  visions  of  mystics  and  dreams  of 
the  millennium  }  Is  this  invincible  faith,  cherished  alike  by 
Channing  and  by  Gratry,  in  the  mercy  of  God  and  the 
progress  of  humanity,  a  mere  illusion  }     Arc  not  rather  the 


514  CHANNIN(;    CENTENARY. 

terrible  comailsions  of  modern  society  the  birth-pains  of  a 
better  time  ?  At  any  rate,  our  duty  is  clear.  We  must 
struggle  and  keep  our  hope,  which  sustains  and  saves  us." 

I  regret  that  the  necessity  of  compression  has  forced  me 
to  spoil  the  eloquence  of  LavoUee ;  but  I  would  recommend 
the  book  to  all  disciples  of  Channing,  because  it  seems  to 
me  that  this  eloquent  French  Catholic  has,  more  than  La- 
boulaye,  Bunsen,  Remusat,  Nippold,  or  any  other  continental 
writer  known  to  me,  apprehended  the  true  significance  of 
Channing's  teaching  for  our  time  ;  and  the  translation  of  his 
little  book  into  the  other  languages  of  Europe  would  secure 
for  Channing  a  greater  influence  than  ever  before. 

John  Fretwell. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHANNING  IN  EUROPE. 

Two  Letters  read  at  the  Brooklyn  Celebration. 


LETTER  FEOM  UNITARIANS  OF  HUNGARY. 
(Translated  by  Miss  Mary  Lyman.) 

To  the  Pious  Believers  of  the  Unitarian  Church  itt  Brooklyn  :  — 

Salvation  and  all  good,  from  the  one  true  God  ! 

We  have  received  the  information  through  the  newspapers,  and 
through  our  dear  brother  in  the  faith,  John  Fretwell,  the  zealous  friend 
of  our  schools,  that  you  were  making  preparations  to  celebrate  the 
hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Channing,  the  wisest  teacher  of 
humanitarian  Christianity  in  this  century.  The  sympathetic  attention 
of  the  world  therefore  rests  upon  you.  It  is  an  undertaking  worthy  of 
the  free  people  of  North  America,  a  fitting  tribute  to  the  great  man,  and 
well-pleasing  to  God.  We  bow  before  your  greatness  of  heart,  and 
implore  God's  blessing  on  your  noble  effort.  Many  thousand  Hunga- 
rians do  this  with  us.  We  wish  that  your  project  may  have  brilliant 
success,  and  that  your  holy  work  may  leave  behind  traces  rich  in  bless- 
ing in  the  life  of  Christianity. 

The  recently  formed  First  Hungarian  Unitarian  Filial  Church  congre- 
gation of  Budapest  will,  as  soon  as  it  has  obtained  the  consent  of  the 
highest  church  council,  send  you  and  the  Unitarian  Churches  of  North 
America  and  England  an  address,  in  order  to  give  you  therein  an  expla- 
nation as  to  our  affairs  and  efforts,  and  in  fitting  manner  to  ask  for  your 
sympathy  and  brotherly  assistance.  In  the  mean  time,  we  obey  the 
impulse  of  our  heart  on  the  occasion  of  this  festival,  which  has  especial 
interest  for  us  as  a  new  church  congregation,  and  greet  you  tlirougli 
these  lines  with  the  genuine  warmth  of  Christian  love  and  with  tlie 
brotherly  affection  of  a  kindred  faith. 

William  Ellcry  Channing  is  your  countryman ;  but  his  soul,  aflame 
with  Christian  love,  is  known  to  us  also.  To  you  belongs  only  his  name : 
his  spirit  belongs,  in  its  universal  working,  to  all  humanity.     We  have 


5l6  CHANNING    CENTENARY, 

also  translated  his  works,  and  published  them  by  the  aid  of  our  North 
American  brothers  in  the  faith.  The  same  are  already  read  in  Hungary 
to-day  by  thousands  in  private,  as  well  as  in  the  reading-rooms  of  the 
public  libraries  and  universities  of  the  Hungarian  youth.  The  ideas 
unfolded  in  them  are  disseminated  in  the  collected  Confessions  of  Faith 
belonging  to  these  institutions.  The  literary  circles  of  Hungary  have 
expressed  themselves  in  the  most  appreciative  manner  with  regard  to 
the  author  of  these  works;  and,  even  in  years  just  elapsed,  prominent 
men  of  learning  and  of  high  social  position  have  gone  over  to  us,  and 
such  conversions  take  place  frequently,  even  now.  All  this  may  be 
ascribed,  in  a  high  degree,  to  the  influence  and  winning  power  of  Chan- 
ning's  Works,  and  to  the  free  spirit  and  stand-point  of  faith  of  the 
English-American  Unitarians. 

These  ideas  have,  among  us,  fallen  upon  a  well-prepared,  deep,  and 
fruitful  soil.  It  is  already  three  hundred  years  since  the  Unitarian  con- 
fession of  faith  has  received  legal  sanction  and  equal  authority  with  the 
opposing  creeds  in  the  Siebenburg  parts  of  Hungary,  and  a  well-organ- 
ized central  church  government  in  one  of  the  most  cultivated  cities  in 
the  land,  Klausenburg,  and  numbers  in  addition  thereto  the  factors  and 
standard-bearers  of  political  freedom  and  universal  culture.  The  first 
founder  and  bishop  of  our  church — who  also  enjoyed  in  his  time  a  Euro- 
pean reputation,  whose  three  hundredth  anniversary  we  celebrated  last 
year,  and  whose  life,  career,  and  glorious  battles  for  the  establishing  of 
the  faith,  one  of  the  ablest  of  our  fellow-believers,  Alexius  Jacob,  has 
described  —  died  as  a  martyr  to  that  teaching  whose  acceptance  your 
fortunate  countryman  and  apostle  of  the  faith,  Channing,  so  gloriously 
achieved  in  this  century  by  the  subtlest  human  thinking. 

Honored  brothers  in  the  faith,  we  beg  you  earnestly  to  turn  your  atten- 
tion to  this  circumstance  :  The  successful  dissemination  of  Channing's 
religious  ideas  opens  in  our  fatherland  a  wide  field,  and  throughout  the 
south-eastern  countries  of  Europe,  those  lying  on  the  Danube  and  even 
down  into  Turkey,  where  Hungary  is  especially  called  upon  to  transplant 
Western  culture.  Many  Hungarians,  also,  are  to-day  living  in  Constanti- 
nople, who  have  there  scientific  and  literary  associations,  and  who  are  in 
constant  intercourse  with  their  Hungarian  homes.  Recently,  Gabriel 
Bdlinth  has  gone  there, —  a  Hungarian  scholar,  tutor  in  the  Budapest 
University,  a  Roman  Catholic  who  became  converted  to  the  Unitarian 
faith,  and,  commissioned  and  partly  assisted  by  the  Hungarian  Academy 
of  Sciences,  travelled  in  the  East  for  several  years,  and  who  has  now 
received  the  appointment  to  an  inlluential  position  in  the  Finance  Bureau 
of  Bagdad. 


THE    INFLUENCE    OF    CHANNING    IN    EUROPE.  517 

Our  English  and  North  American  companions  in  the  faith  could 
accomplish  successful  missionary  work  in  Hungary,  and,  through  Hun- 
gary, in  the  East.  Their  sacrifices  would  bear  here  a  rich  harvest  in 
the  spread  of  Unitarian  Christianity,  and  of  Western,  especially  English, 
civilization. 

We  commend  you  to  the  protection  of  God,  and  our  interests  to  your 
hearty  sympathy,  and  remain,  with  respect  and  brotherly  greetings  in  the 
faith,  at  Budapest,  the  capital  of  Hungary,  March  20,  1880,  your  loving 
brothers,  and  companions  in  the  faith,  in  Christ. 

(Signed  by) 

Prince  Arthur  Odescalchi, 

Of  Szariin. 

Dr.  Peter  Hatala, 

Public  and  Professor  in  Ordinary  at  the  Royal  Hungarian  University  in  Budapest. 

Blasius  Baron  Orban, 

Member  of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  in  Hungary. 

Alexius  Jakob,  M.P.R., 
Member  of  the  Hungarian  Academy  of  Savants. 

Aron  Buzogany, 

Secretary  of  the  Department  of  Education  and  Public   Instruction;  Secretary 
of  the  Unitarian  Filial  Church  Congregation  in  Budapest. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  CHANNINQ'S  WEITINGS  IN  EUEOPE. 
By  JOHN  FRETWELL. 

London,  March  20,  1880. 

(i.)  My  dear  Dr.  Pttlnam, —  Your  invitation  to  address  the  meeting 
at  Brooklyn  on  Channing's  influence  in  Europe  recalls  to  me  so  many 
inspiring  memories  that  I  would  gladly  cross  the  Atlantic  to  be  witli 
you  on  this  grand  occasion,  and  listen,  as  I  have  often  listened  in 
former  days  with  charmed  ear,  to  the  eloquence  of  the  speakers  who 
are  to  address  our  people  in  praise  of  William  Ellery  Channing. 

But  I  have  to  speak  in  Germany  on  that  very  day;  and,  on  the  whole, 
1  shall  be  better  occupied  in  trying  to  spread  the  influence  of  Channing 
in  the  Old  World  than  in  talking  about  him  to  those  who  know  his 
work  better  than  I  on  the  Western  Continent. 


5l8  CMANNING    CENTENARY. 

I  gladly  accede,  however,  to  your  request  that  I  would  send  you  a 
letter  containing  some  account  of  the  influence  exercised  by  the  works 
of  your  great  countryman,  here  and  on  the  continent  of  Europe.  While, 
to  procure  you  still  more  detailed  information,  I  have  asked  competent 
persons  in  every  European  country  to  send  you  direct  reports  on  the 
influence  exercised  by  Channing  on  their  respective  peoples. 

I.  Great  Britain. 

(2.)  Here  the  testimonies  are  so  numerous  that  my  only  difficulty  is  to 
select  a  few,  while  I  must  necessarily  omit  a  large  number  of  almost 
equal  value.  The  great  Christian  philosopher  who  has  contributed 
most  in  our  time  to  the  development  of  Unitarian  Christianity,  Pro- 
fessor James  Martineau,  has  frequently  paid  tribute  to  his  American 
forerunner;  and  I  will  quote  only  one  expression  from  his  discourse 
preached  before  the  British  and  Foreign  Unitarian  Association,  May 
19,  1869,  wherein,  after  speaking  of  the  Religion  of  Causatioti^  as  taught 
by  Priestley,  he  goes  on  to  Channing's  Religion  of  Conscience^  and 
says :  — 

"  When  the  tones  of  the  New  England  prophet  reached  our  ears,  why  did  they 
so  stir  our  hearts .-'  They  brought  a  new  language,  they  burst  into  a  forgotten 
chamber  of  the  soul,  they  recalled  natural  faiths  which  had  been  struck  down, 
they  touched  the  springs  of  a  sleeping  enthusiasm,  and  carried  us  forward  from 
the  outer  temple  of  devout  science  to  the  inner  shrine  of  self-denying  duty. 
The  very  inspiration  of  the  new  gospel,  in  what  thought  does  it  lie  ?  The 
greatness  of  human  capacity  for  voluntary  righteousness,  for  victory  over 
temptation,  for  resemblance  to  God." 

(3.)  When  we  listened  at  Unity  Church  to  these  words  of  James 
Martineau,  we  had  among  us  one  whom  we  loved  to  call  the  English 
Channing,  Martineau's  colleague  and  friend, —  John  James  Tayler,  the 
Principal  of  our  Divinity  School. 

Saintly  as  Channing,  he  had  a  wide  and  thorough  knowledge  of  the 
tendencies  of  modern  speculative  thought  and  the  results  of  modern 
Biblical  criticism.  In  that  most  fascinating  of  all  ecclesiastical  his- 
tories, his  Retrospect  of  Religious  Life  in  Eiigland  he  defends  Chan- 
ning against  the  reproach  of  having  written  no  great  work,  saying  of 
Channing's  publications :  — 

"  Addressed  to  present  feelings  and  interests,  and  eagerly  absorbed  by  them, 
they  only  infused  the  principles  of  which  they  were  the  vehicle  more  deeply 
into  the  heart  of  society.  Such  has  ever  been  the  literary  character  of  men 
who  have  acted  most  powerfully  on  the  general  mind  of  their  time.     It  was 


THE    INFLUENCE    OF    CHANNING    IN    EUROPE,  519 

that  of  Wesley;   to  a  large  extent,  it  was  that  of   Baxter  and  Luther.      His 
function  was  rather  that  of  the  prophet  than  of  the  scholar  or  philosopher." 

And  again  (p.  306,  edition  of  1876):  — 

"  The  earnest  and  devotional  character  of  his  mind  was  altogether  averse  to 
the  wild  and  gratuitous  scepticism  which  has  infected  so  much  of  the  theology 
of  the  Germans.  He  does  not  appear  to  have  drawn  in  any  instance  direct 
from  German  stores  of  erudition  and  philosophy.  Yet  his  writings  —  perhaps 
in  America,  certainly  among  the  Unitarians  of  England — have  contributed  to 
prepare  the  public  mind  for  more  truly  estimating  the  scholarship  and  compre- 
hending the  intellect  of  Germany,  and  furnished  a  medium  of  transition  from 
the  school  of  Priestley,  which,  on  nearly  every  point,  is  at  war  with  them." 

II.  Ireland. 

(4.)  Turning  from  England  to  the  sister  isle,  we  find  there,  in  the 
excellent  little  book  of  Rev.  John  Orr,  of  Comber,  a  clear  and  succinct 
statement  of  the  services  rendered  by  Channing  and  his  school  in  "mod- 
ifying the  dominant  theology,  reconciling  the  sceptic  with  religion,  and 
promoting  every  good  form  of  humanitarian  enterprise  " ;  fully  indors- 
ing the  language  used  by  Starr  King,  when  he  calls  the  "  single  contribu- 
tion of  Channing's  thought  and  character  to  the  influences  that  mould 
our  civilization  equivalent  in  value  almost  to  the  collective  achievements 
of  whole  churches." 

III.  Scotland. 

(5.)  Having  quoted  from  the  printed  utterances  of  three  representative 
theologians,  let  us  now  turn  to  a  Scotch  farmer,  "  George  Hope,  of  Fenton 
Barns."  This  gentleman  was  a  man  of  no  small  influence  in  Scotland. 
His  essay  on  the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws  was  one  of  the  three  which 
were  selected  as  worthy  of  a  prize  and  of  publication,  the  other  two  prize 
essayists  being  also  Unitarians, —  Mr.  Arthur  Morse  and  the  afterwards 
so  celebrated  William  Rathbone  Greg.  When  the  three  great  "  Corn- 
leaguers" —  Cobden,  Bright,  and  Ash  worth  —  went  to  Scotland  to  speak- 
in  favor  of  repeal,  one  of  them  asked  to  what  religious  denomination 
Hope  belonged,  and,  on  hearing  that  he  also  was  a  Unitarian,  expressed 
his  surprise  that  these  men  with  no  religion  should  be  such  philan- 
thropists ! 

Let  us  see  to  whom  he  owed  the  inspiration  of  philanthropy.  In  a 
letter  addressed  to  his  brother  in  Canada,  he  writes  :  — 

"  When  I  first  came  across  Dr.  Channing's  writings,  I  was  electrified  by  them. 
I  felt  that  he  gave  a  clear  and  articulate  cxprcssitm  to  the  dim  thoughts  that 
had   previously  floated  through  my  own  mind.      I'y  iiis  a.ssistancc,  I   looked 


520  CMANNING    CP:NTENARY. 

higher  up  to  the  blue  vault  above  us,  and  obtained  a  clearer  view  of  the  Infi- 
nite Father.  But  it  is  not  alone  in  religious  sentiment,  exactly  so  called,  that 
I  have  been  educated  by  his  instructions.  From  him  I  have  obtained  juster 
views  of  the  rights  and  worth  of  the  human  race.  Who  that  reads  his  writings 
can  be  insensible  to  the  sin  and  misery  of  war,  to  the  great  curse  of  slavery,  to 
the  guilt  of  ambition,  which  makes  murder  the  trade  of  thousands,  subjugating 
men's  souls,  and  breaking  them  to  servility  as  the  chief  duty  of  life  ?" 

The  man  who  thus  escaped  by  Channing's  aid  from  the  gloomy 
bondage  of  Calvinism  laid  twenty  years  later  the  foundation-stone  of 
the  Second  Unitarian  Church  in  Glasgow.  His  farm  at  Fenton  Barns 
became  renowned  through  all  England,  not  merely  because  from  poor 
beginnings  he  raised  it  to  a  model  of  successful  farming,  but  also 
on  account  of  his  admirable  treatment  of  his  laborers. 

IV.  Channing  Propagandism  in  Britain. 

(6.)  The  case  of  George  Hope  is  but  one  among  hundreds  of  instances 
of  the  robust  virtue  inspired  among  our  people  by  the  direct  or  indirect 
influence  of  Channing's  word ;  and  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  num- 
bers of  our  preachers,  from  Robert  Aspland  down  to  John  Page  Hopps, 
have  used  every  available  opportunity  of  popularizing  his  thought,  and 
of  bringing  his  works  within  the  reach  of  all  who  were  open  to  their 
influence.  A  cheap  edition  was  published  by  Rev.  Mr.  Maclellan,  of 
Belfast,  in  Northern  Ireland.  Joseph  Barker,  a  preacher  of  the  Metho- 
dist New  Connection,  recommended  in  his  periodical,  the  Evangelical 
Reformer,  the  perusal  of  Channing's  works ;  and  after  his  expulsion, 
on  the  ground  of  heresy,  from  this  Connection,  he  published,  with  the 
aid  of  money  furnished  by  a  Unitarian  family  in  Leeds,  a  cheap  edition 
of  Channing's  Works,  bringing  them  within  the  reach  of  thousands,  who 
but  for  him  would  probably  never  have  seen  them.  The  British  and 
Foreign  Unitarian  Association  has  always  distributed  large  quantities 
of  Channing's  separate  discourses,  and,  during  the  secretaryship  of  the 
Rev.  Robert  Spears,  sold  and  gave  away  twenty-four  thousand  copies  of 
the  complete  works,  distributing  them  not  in  Britain  alone,  but  among 
readers  of  English  on  the  continent,  in  India,  and  our  colonies. 

Since  his  withdrawal  from  the  secretaryship  of  the  Association,  Mr. 
Spears  has  established  a  missionary  paper,  T/ie  Christian  Life,  a 
Unitarian  Journal,  which  distinguishes  itself  from  other  papers  in  our 
denomination  by  its  making  the  promulgation  of  those  views  taught  by 
Channing  its  special  object.  This  journal  contains  also  the  richest  fund 
of  information  about  the  spread  of  C)aanning's  influence  throughout  the 
world,  while  its  zealous  editor  is  now  working  hard  to  celebrate  the  one 


THE    INFLUENCE    OF    CHANNING    IN    EUROPE.  5*21 

hundredth  anniversary  of  Channing's  birthday  by  circulating  one  hun- 
dred thousand  copies  of  the  complete  works,  including  the  "  Perfect 
Life,"  at  the  price  of  twenty-five  cents. 

V.  Channing's  Influence  in  the  Orthodox  Churches  of 
Britain, 

I.  Sam.  ii.,  36:  "And  it  shall  come  to  pass  that  everyone  that  is  left  in 
thine  house  shall  come  and  crouch  to  him  for  a  piece  of  silver  and  a  morsel 
of  bread,  saying,  Put  me,  I  pray  thee,  into  one  of  the  priest's  offices,  that  I  may 
eat  a  piece  of  bread." 

(7.)  The  prophecy  of  the  man  of  God  to  Eli  is  applicable  to  so  many 
ministers  of  the  State  Church  and  of  the  popular  theology  that  it  is 
very  difficult  to  obtain  clear  statements  of  the  impression  made  by 
Channing  upon  conformists. 

The  English  abolitionists  and  the  leaders  of  our  Peace  Society,  like 
Henry  Richards,  M.P.,  have  of  course  recognized  the  immense  services 
done  by  Channing  to  their  cause. 

The  Rev.  J.  Baldwin  Brown,  most  eloquent  and  enlightened  of  the 
Congregationalists,  and  Thomas  Hughes,  M.P.,  Q.C.,  the  pupil  of  and 
biographer  of  the  good  and  great  Dr.  Arnold  of  Rugby,  shew  their 
admiration  of  Channing  by  taking  part  in  our  London  commemoration. 

Other  ministers,  of  kindred  spirit  to  Channing's,  like  F.  W.  Robert, 
son  of  Brighton,  Stopford  Brooke  of  London,  and  the  Rev.  F.  D. 
Maurice  (himself  the  son  of  a  Unitarian),  have,  while  bold  enough  in 
expressing  their  sympathy  with  Channing,  probably  injured  thereby 
their  prospects  of  advancement ;  and  many  who,  like  Canon  Farrar,  ap- 
proach the  direction  of  his  teachings  on  the  subject  of  eternal  punish- 
ment, ignore  him  altogether. 

In  his  Bampton  lectures  on  the  "Divinity  of  Jesus  Christ,"  Canon 
Liddon  has  made  frequent  quotations  from  Dr.  Channing,  for  the  purpose 
of  attempting  their  refutation;  and  he  even  uses  the  brilliant  but  untena- 
ble arguments  of  Renan  in  the  attempt  to  show  that  Channing,  if  he  had 
lived  to-day,  would  have  been  either  a  Trinitarian  Christian  or  not  a 
Christian  at  all.  Arthur  Penrhyn  Stanley,  the  Dean  of  Westminster, 
who  refused  a  bishopric,  preferring  the  office  of  chaplain  in  ordinary  and 
confidential  adviser  to  our  Queen,  who  has  always  sliown  himself  brave 
toward  the  bishops,  though  sometimes  too  deferent  to  court  influence, 
'  who  called  our  Priestley  "the  last  of  the  pilgrim  fathers,"  has  several 
times  expressed  his  admiration  of  the  work  done  by  Dr.  Channing. 

How  many  laymen  and  preachers  have  been  won  over  to  our  ranks 
by  the  peru.sal  of  Channing's  works,  it  is  hard  for  me  to  say;  but  I 


522  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

know  the  number  to  be  large,  and  to  his  writings,  more  tlian  to  those  of 
any  other  Unitarian,  may  be   applied  those  words  of  James    Freeman 

Clarke :  — 

"  Those  men  we  honor  here, 
Sent  to  bring  back  the  gospel's  blessed  youth, — 
Who  knew  no  doubt,  no  fear, 
And  so  renewed  man's  faith  in  God  and  truth: 
Far  as  thought  goes,  their  influence  has  gone, 
Through  iron  gates  and  walls  of  stone 
Built  around  churches  to  keep  out  all  change 
By  magnetism  strange. 

Their  simple,  honest  word  has  entered  in 

Unchallenged,  passed  all  creeds ; 

And  now  their  thought. 

Which  fifty  years  ago  seemed  rankest  sin. 

Is  freely  welcomed  and  around  us  taught." 

VI.  The  Greatest  Tribute  of  All. 

(8.)  There  was  one  man  in  Europe  who  had  more  capacity  to  judge 
of  Channing's  true  place  among  the  prophets  of  God  in  history  than 
almost  any  other,  English  or  German,  theologian  or  statesman.  This 
was  C.  Josias  von  Bunsen.  Sent  by  the  King  of  Prussia  in  1834  to 
Rome,  to  arrange  the  differences  between  the  Prussian  government  and 
the  Pope,  and  in  1841  to  England,  to  arrange  with  our  government  for 
the  establishment  of  a  Protestant  Bishopric  at  Jerusalem,  he  became 
the  friend  of  our  Queen,  of  Prince  Albert,  and  of  Dean  Stanley.  De- 
voted to  the  very  close  of  his  life  to  the  study  of  the  Bible,  he  was  at 
once  a  statesman,  a  scholar,  and  a  liberal  though  always  a  Trinitarian 
theologian;  and,  striving  to  enrich  English  theology,  on  the  one  hand, 
with  the  results  of  German  scholarship  and  philosophy,  he  took  to  the 
German  Church,  on  the  other,  his  observations  of  the  practical  methods 
of  Christian  work,  which  are  peculiar  to  the  voluntary  church  organiza- 
tions in  England  and  America. 

The  unprejudiced  opinion  of  such  a  man  is  of  more  value  than  that 
of  any  one  belonging  to  our  own  body,  however  great  he  may  be. 

And  what  does  Bunsen  say?  (See  his  God  in  History^  Book  V., 
p.  268)  :— 

"  Now  since  Channing  spent  his  life  in  indefatigably  and  fearlessly  incul 
eating  these  principles  by  speech  and  writing  upon  his  fellow-countrymen,  the 
influence  of  his  personality .  upon  all  Christians  speaking  the  English  tongue 
cannot  be  estimated  too  highly.  And  hence  we  can  discern  how  it  came  to  pass 
that  the   man  whom  the  older    Unitarians  of  America  and  England  regarded 


THE    INFLUENCE    OF    CHANNING    IN    EUROPE.  523 

with  mistrust,  and  Calvinists  and  Methodists  with  abhorrence,  while  the  friends 
and  defenders  of  slavery  at  once  feared  and  hated  him,  no  less  on  account  of 
his  classic  eloquence,  which  reminds  us  of  the  most  admirable  models  of  an- 
tiquity, has  already,  within  a  few  years  after  his  death,  come  to  be  revered  in 
every  quarter  of  his  vast  fatherland  as  a  grand  Christian  saint  and  man  of 
God, —  nay,  also  as  a  prophet  of  the  Christian  consciousness  regarding  the 
future;  and,  without  doubt,  he  is  destined  to  exert  a  still  increasing  influence, 
throughout  the  United  States,  on  the  spiritual  conception  of  Christianity  and 
the  practical  application  of  its  principles. 

"Channing  is  an  antique  hero  with  a  Christian  heart.  He  is  a  man  like  a 
Hellene,  a  citizen  like  a  Roman,  a  Christian  like  an  apostle.  People  take  him 
for  what  he  is  not  when  they  treat  him  as  a  learned  and  speculative  theologian." 

He  then  goes  on  to  suggest  that  in  the  latter  case  Channing  might 
have  become  in  some  sort  a  Trinitarian,  quotes  from  the  discourses  on 
"The  Means  of  Promoting  Christianity,"  "Sermon  on  Spiritual  Free- 
dom," "  Remarks  on  Life  and  Character  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte,"  and 
"  Essay  on  the  Duty  of  the  Free  States  of  North  America,"  and  con- 
tinues :  — 

"  If  such  a  man,  whose  whole  life  and  conversation,  in  the  sight  of  all  his 
fellow-citizens,  stand  in  absolute  correspondence  with  the  earnestness  of  his 
Christian  language,  and  are  without  a  spot,  be  not  a  prophet  of  God's  presence 
in  humanity,  I  know  of  none  such." 

I  have  given  Bunsen  a  section  to  himself,  because  he  of  all  men  is 
entitled  to  speak  both  in  the  name  of  England  and  of  Germany.  And 
now  let  me  speak  of  Germany  alone. 

VII.  Channing's  Influence  in   Germany. 

(9.)  A  translation  of  Channing's  Complete  Works,  by  Sydow  and 
Schulze,  was  published  in  Berlin  in  the  year  1850,  some  years  before 
Bunsen  published  his  God  in  History ;  and  it  seems  to  me,  after  a  care- 
ful study  of  Bunsen's  later  influence  in  Germany,  that,  while  he  may 
not  be  willing  to  accord  to  Channing  the  power  to  give  any  "scientific 
solution  of  the  problem  of  God  in  history,"  this  great  thinker  and  his 
friend  Richard  Rothe  approached  in  later  days  more  nearly  to  tlie  Chris- 
tology  of  Channing  than  is  shown  by  the  book  from  which  I  have 
quoted. 

The  publication  in  1859  of  Bunsen's  Signs  of  the  Times  was  the 
starting-point  for  a  new  Protestant  movement  in  Germany,  the  leaders 
of  which  were,  among  lawyers,  Dr.  Biuntscldi,  Baron  von  IIoltzcndolT, 
and    Hausser;    and,    among  the   theologians,   Dr.  Daniel   Schcnkrirdna 


524  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Richard  Rotlie  of  Heidelberg,  and  Dr.  Carl  Schwarz  of  Gotha,  and 
liaumgartcn,  Holtzmann,  Spaeth,  Littel,  Krause,  Manchot,  etc. 

While  the  theological  diversities  of  these  men  were  very  great,  that 
Religion  of  Conscience,  which  as  Martineau  says  sprang  to  its  feet  at  the 
bidding  of  Channing,  was  the  bond  of  union  and  the  basis  of  common 
activity  among  these  men.  In  1S65,  at  Eisenach,  they  constituted  the 
I'rotestantenverein.  Their  example  was  quickly  followed  by  Holland 
and  Hungary;  and,  at  the  Conferences  of  these  Associations,  delegates 
from  the  Church  of  Channing,  both  in  England  and  America,  have  fre- 
quently been  warmly  received  and  respectfully  listened  to.  While  Hase, 
Gieseler,  Pfleiderer,  Hagenbach,  and  many  other  German  writers,  have 
borne  their  testimony  to  Channing's  influence,  we  can  only  let  one  of 
them  speak  here,  Nippold,  the  historian  of  the  Protestantenverein :  — 

"  After  Parker,  who  is  widely  known  by  the  popular  style  of  his  writings,* 
it  is  especially  Channing  who  claims  our  attention.  The  study  of  Channing's 
life  shows  many  points  of  resemblance  between  him  and  the  great  Protestant 
heroes  of  Europe.  His  chief  characteristic  is  the  active  power  of  the  individ- 
ual conscience.  Like  Vinet  and  Chalmers,  he  cannot  be  called  an  original 
thinker;  but,  like  them,  he  insists  on  the  development  of  individual  religion, 
emphasizing  above  all  things  what  is  seemingly  human  and  common  to  all  indi- 
vidualities rather  than  the  exceptional  endowments  of  genius. 

"  In  all  the  fundamentals  of  Channing's  theology,  the  gospel  freedom  of  the 
Unitarians  is  as  strongly  marked  as  their  Christian  piety.  His  anthropology, 
like  that  of  the  Rationalists,  is  based  on  the  possibility  of  repentance  and  im- 
provement, which,  however,  is  not  with  him,  as  with  them,  a  matter  of  philo- 
sophic deduction,  but  the  result  of  his  ethical  faith  in  the  dignity  of  man. 
The  Augustinian  pessimism  of  the  old  orthodoxy  is  in  his  eyes  a  hinderance  to 
the  true  spirit  of  Christianity;  and  he  clothes  the  old  rationalistic  Trinity,  God, 
Virtue,  and  Immortality,  with  a  beauty  unknown  to  the  Rationalists.  Jesus  is 
not  for  him  merely  an  object  of  admiration,  but  also  an  example  that  we  may 
follow,  whose  death  has  a  practical  moral  value  for  us,  and  who  has  revealed 
to  us  the  fatherly  providence  of  God. 

"While  Channing's  Christology  was  essentially  Unitarian,  and  he  was  brave 
enough  to  bear  the  social  odium  attached  to  this  name,  he  was  strongly  opposed 
to  sectarianism  and  the  prison  walls  of  creeds;  seeking  the  manifestations  of 
Christian  character  not  in  them,  but  in  the  spirit  and  life  of  its  professors.  He 
showed  his  eminently  ethical  tendencies  by  his  brave  antagonism  to  all  social 
and  religious  evils,  but  especially  to  the  spirit  of  slavery  and  persecution. 
With  a  sincere  love  for  the  republican  institutions  of  his  birthland,  he  warns 
his  countrymen  against  national  pride  and  prejudice ;  and  his  horror  for  the 


*  These  few  words  are  all  that  Nippold  has  to  say  regarding  Parker,  while  Fock  in  his  His- 
tory 0/  SocinianUm  has  more  to  say  about  Paiker  than  about  Channing. 


THE    INFLUENCE    OF    CHANNING    IN    EUROPE.  525 

excesses  of  the  French  Revolution  of  1793  '*  equalled  by  his  benevolent  sym- 
pathy for  the  legitimate  national  aspirations  of  France,  Germany,  and  Italy. 
His  dislike  of  party  spirit  is  shown  by  his  repeated  warnings  against  the  faults 
of  organizations,  while  he  cordially  acknowledges  their  value  within  due  limits. 
It  was  his  object  not  to  make  men  into  parts  of  a  machine,  but  to  develop  their 
self-conscious  individual  energy,  not  to  subject  them  to  external  authority,  but 
to  win  their  obedience  for  the  voice  of  God  in  conscience.  He  shows,  too, 
how  dangerous  the  exaggeration  of  associated  action  is  to  the  whole  com- 
munit)',  how  far  superior  are  the  quiet  influences  of  home  life  to  those  of  any 
public  institution  for  children,  and  how  the  proper  use  of  natural  relations  does 
more  to  promote  Christianity  than  any  ofiicial  mission.  In  all  these  practical 
questions,  he  carries  out  his  own  fundamental  principle,  the  value  of  the  indi- 
vidual soul;  and,  just  like  Vinet,  he  subordinates  to  this  end  all  political  and 
ecclesiastical  institutions. 

"In  treating  of  the  elevation  of  the  working  classes,  he  looks,  first  of  all,*'to 
their  moral,  and,  secondly,  to  their  material  welfare.  It  is  just  the  same  with 
his  care  for  the  prisoners,  for  the  cause  of  temperance,  for  seafaring  men,  and 
for  education.  The  philanthropist  Brownson,  Tuckerman,  the  lover  of  the 
lost,  Father  Taylor,  the  sailor's  evangelist,  found  in  Channing  their  most  ardent 
sympathizer.  No  one  was  more  in  earnest  about  keeping  holy  the  Sabbath  day 
than  Channing,  yet  no  one  was  more  strongly  opposed  to  the  Sabbatarian 
degradation  of  Christianity  for  objects  of  police  than  he  was. 

"Channing  has  emphasized  in  America  that  ethical  character  of  Christianity 
which  has  long  been  insisted  on  by  the  noblest  minds  in  Europe.  To  this  the 
mystical  and  supernatural  aspects  of  religion  are  in  him  subordinate,  and  its 
most  essential  aspect  is  conscious  devotion  to  what  is  good.  But  this  devotion 
must  be  conscious  and  self-acting.  Channing's  virtue  is  not  passive,  but  active. 
Patience,  humility,  self-denial,  are  inspired  by  him  with  robust  virility,  and  suf- 
fering is  sacred  because  it  is  sustained  by  moral  energy.  In  spite  of  all  Chan- 
ning's critical,  speculative,  and  aesthetic  deficiencies,  he  is  one  of  the  moral 
heroes  of  our  century,  and  deserves  to  be  called  '  The  Unitarian  Saint.'  And 
the  Unitarians  are  worthy  of  their  hero.  While  Gieseler  praises  them  because 
they  have  won  back  to  Christianity  many  a  soul  alienated  from  it  by  the  creeds 
and  superstitions  of  the  sects,  Wichcrn  has  found  among  the  Unitarians  some 
of  his  most  successful  and  devoted  predecessors  in  the  works  of  practical 
Christian  love.  Even  Schaff,  who  regards  them  as  infidels,  is  obliged  to  con- 
fess that  they  are  as  generous  as  their  orthodox  neighbors.  The  great  impor- 
tance of  Channing  is  now  recognized  in  the  whole  civilized  world,  after  men 
like  Edgar  Quinet  in  France  and  Bunsen  in  Germany  have  drawn  attention 
to  it." 

(10.)  And  this  influence  on  Germany  has  extended  far  beyond  the  bor- 
ders of  the  Fatherland.  Among  the  Lutheran  pastors  living  far  away  in 
Soutlicrn  Transylvania,  among  those  apostolic  laborers  who  are  working 


526  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

under  terrible  discouragements  to  keep  alive  the  flame  of  evangelical 
Christianity  in  the  little  villages  of  Austrian  Galicia  and  Silesia,  in  the 
Baltic  provinces  of  Russia,  and  among  the  preachers  and  professors  of 
Holland,  I  have  found  Sydow's  translation  of  Channing ;  and  its  posses- 
sors have  welcomed  me  when  I  spoke  of  him,  and  have  wanted  to  know 
more  of  his  people.  To  Berne,  to  Basel,  and  to  Ziirich,  his  thought  has 
also  gone  in  German  dress. 

VIII.  France. 

Channing's  own  letters,  written  in  1831  and  1832  to  Baron  de  Gerando 
and  M.  de  Sismondi,  show  his  intense  interest  in  the  state  of  religion  in 
France.  His  own  sojourn  on  the  continent  helped  to  make  his  work 
known  there ;  and  when,  after  the  events  of  1 848,  the  grave  question  of 
pauperism  was  agitated  among  the  French  publicists,  one  of  them, 
Laboulaye,  was  delighted  to  find,  in  Channing's  paper  on  the  ministry  to 
the  poor,  the  solution  so  much  desired.  He  published  a  translation 
under  the  title,  Chajtning,  Apostolat  aupres  des  Pativres,  and  soon 
after,  Chantiing:  CEuvres  Sociales.  Traduction  Laboulaye.*  After  the 
appearance  of  W.  H.  Channing's  memoirs  of  his  uncle,  there  appeared 
another  work,  Channing :  Sa  Vie  et  scs  CEuv?'es,  par  M.  de  Renuisat. 
And  so  the  words  of  Channing  inspired  in  France  that  ministry  to  the 
poor,  which  was  carried  on  in  Switzerland  by  Pestalozzi,  in  Alsace  by 
Pastor  Oberlin,  and  in  Hamburg  by  Madame  Sieveking  and  Dr.  Wichern. 

In  that  martyr  Church  of  France, —  dear  to  us  for  its  sufferings,  and 
for  those  noble  souls,  like  James  Martineau,  which  it  has  given  to  hu- 
manity,—  there  have  been  many  who,  like  the  two  Coquerels,  Reville, 
Fontanes,  Pressensee,  Colani,  Vincent,  Dide,  have  not  only  loved  and 
studied  Channing,  but  have  carried  the  influence  of  his  thought  to  the 
French  part  of  Switzerland  and  to  the  Walloon  Churches  of  Holland. 
But  Laboulaye  and  Rdmusat  are  peculiarly  important,  because  their 
enthusiasm  for  Channing  is  free  from  all  theological  bias. 

Another  Frenchman  whom  w'e  cannot  neglect  in  this  connection  is 
M.  Renan,  whose  "  Channing  et  le  Mouvement  Unitaire  aux  Etats- 
Unis,"  published  in  his  Etudes  d'Histoire  Religieuse,  1863,  does  as 
much  justice  to  Channing  and  to  American  and  English  Unitarianism 
as  his  non-Christian  and  specially  anti-Protestant  bias  will  permit.     To 

*  This  publication  was  reviewed  in  the  principal  journals  of  France  and  Belgium,  especially  bv 
Renan  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  by  Leroy  in  the  Revue  de  Paris,  and  by  Pelletan  in  the 
Siicle  ;  while  M.  van  Niemen  in  Brussels  wrote  a  study  of  Channing's  Works. 


THE    INFLUENCE    OF    CHANNING    IN    EUROPE.  527 

show  the  spirit  of  Renan's  brilliant  essay  on  Channing   the  following 
quotation  will  suffice  :  — 

"The  special  character  of  France  prevents  us  from  supposing  that  Channing's 
ideas  (except  under  great  restrictions)  are  applicable  to  it.  They  aspire  to 
create  an  enlightened  population  rather  than  a  grand  culture.  But  France 
unites  two  extremes, —  a  general  vulgarity  below  mediocrity,  and  an  intellectual 
aristocracy  transcending  all  others  in  the  world.  Channing's  religious  ideas 
seem  to  me  just  as  inappropriate  to  our  country.  If  France  were  really  capable 
of  creating  a  national  religious  movement,  she  would  have  become  Protestant 
under  the  favorable  conditions  of  the  seventeenth  century.  But  she  has  re- 
jected Protestantism.  She  is  the  most  orthodox  country  in  the  world,  because 
she  is  the  most  indifferent  in  religious  matters." 

Such  assertions  may  impose  upon  careless  observers,  who  are  fasci- 
nated by  Renan's  magnificent  style.     But  are  they  true.'* 

When  a  Sylvestre  de  Sacy  bears  witness  to  the  historic  significance 
of  the  French  Protestant  Church,  a  Charles  de  R^musat  to  its  religious 
value,  an  Emile  Montegut  to  its  moral  influence,  an  Audiganne  and  a 
Baudon  to  the  industrial  achievements  of  the  French  Protestants,  we 
may  be  justified  in  supposing  that  Renan  has  not  seen  the  whole  truth ; 
and,  for  my  own  part,  I  believe  that  what  may  have  been  wanting  to 
make  the  Unitarianism  of  Channing  a  power  in  France  has  been  sup- 
plied by  James  Martineau.  And  now  I  have  to  call  the  attention  of  our 
American  brethren  to  a  French  book  upon  Channing,  which  seems  to 
me  at  once  the  most  affecting,  the  most  interesting,  and,  in  its  possible 
effects  for  the  spread  of  Channing's  influence  among  the  Catholic  races 
of  Europe,  the  most  important  that  has  yet  appeared.  It  is  entitled 
Chattning :  Sa  Vie  et  sa  Doctrine,  par  Rene'  Lavollee.  Oiivrage  cou- 
ro7ini  par  r Acaddmie  des  Sciences  Morales  et  Politiqiies.  Paris,  1876. 
Renan's  essay  was  the  work  of  the  librarian  of  Louis  Napoleon,  too 
courtly  to  write  what  might  displease  the  bigoted  empress,  and  flattering 
imperial  vanity  before  the  bubble  had  burst. 

Lavollde's  book  is  that  of  a  pious  Catholic,  seeing  in  Channing  the 
American  Fdnelon,  wishing  that  the  Unitarian  saint  were  a  Catholic 
like  himself,  writing  when  the  imperial  bubble  has  burst,  and  earnestly 
trying  to  learn  from  the  Americans  what  he  and  his  fellow-c9untrymen 
can  do  to  avert  the  terrible  dangers  which  threaten  modern  France. 
I  have  sent  you  to-day  my  review  of  this  book.  So  I  will  now  only 
beg  you  to  tell  my  American  brethren  that  I  see  the  call  of  God  in  it 
to  use  the  means  offered  us  by  Lavollde's  essay  of  bringing  Channing's 
noblest  inspirations  to  bear  on  our  Catholic  brethren  in  Canada,  France, 
Italy,  Spain,  Portugal,  etc.,  far  more  persuasively  than  without  Lavollde's 
aid  we  could  have  done  it. 


528  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

Jules  Simon's  tribute  to  Cliaaning,  mentioned  in  the  preface  to  this 
book,  is  also  a  most  encouraging  evidence  that  the  French  republicans 
of  to-day  are  alive  to  their  real  duties  to  their  countr}^  and  lead  us  to 
hope  that  those  misfortunes  of  1793  and  1830,  which  no  one  deplored 
more  than  Channing,  will  be  averted  now. 

IX.  Italy. 

The  most  characteristic  evidence  of  Channing's  influence  in  Italy  is 
contained  in  an  article  by  Professor  Sbarbaro,  published  in  the  Rivista 
Europea  of  October,  1879.  He  relates  how  in  1863  he  met  at  Leghorn 
a  Jewish  lady  from  Manchester  (probably  Mrs.  Schwabe,  the  friend  of 
John  James  Tayler),  who  first  drew  his  attention  to  Channing's  works. 
He  obtained  them  in  Florence,  and  says:  — 

"  They  were  to  me  a  revelation,  or  rather  a  reminiscence,  of  ideas  which  I 
had  long  entertained  in  my  own  confused  and  indistinct  thought,  and  which  now 
came  before  me  in  orderly  elucidation,  like  the  faces  of  old  friends  never  for- 
gotten. 

"  No  single  writer,  since  Dante,  has  ever  made  so  great  and  so  profound  an 
impression  on  my  faculties  as  Channing." 

Sbarbaro  shows  ground  for  believing  that  Channing  supplies  the  very 
form  and  spirit  of  that  religion  which  is  needed  by  the  craving  heart  of 
thoughtful  Italy;  and  he  concludes:  — 

"  In  tine,  I  have  made  choice  of  Channing  as  the  most  eloquent  witness,  and 
an  irrefragable  proof  of  the  new  evolution  of  Christian  thought  in  the  world, 
and  of  the  reform  which  is  being  initiated  in  human  religiousness,  because,  in 
the  story  of  his  career,  and  in  the  fortunes  of  his  books,  in  the  marvel  of  their 
rapid  and  universal  diffusion  in  all  corners  of  the  civilized  earth,  is  to  be  seen 
the  most  luminous  and  triumphant  proof  of  the  reality  of  that  movement 
which  is  inwardly  transforming  European  society,  and  bringing  it  little  by  little 
to  worship  under  the  roof  of  a  new  temple,  that  church  really  catholic,  whose 
frontal  shall  bear,  without  untruth,  the  inscription,  "To  the  One  God,"  which 
Mazzini  hailed  on  the  facades  of  the  Unitarian  Churches  of  Hungary." 

Another  sign  of  the  times  in  Italy  is  the  appearance  of  Terenzio 
Mamiani's  La  Religione  delV  Avvenire;  della  Religione  Posit iva  e 
Perpetua  del  Genere  Umano.  Milan,  1880.  Mamiani,  who  became  ac- 
quainted with  Unitarianism  through  Professor  Bracciforti's  translation 
of  Channing,  advises  his  countrymen  to  develop  the  movement  com- 
menced by  Bernardino  Occhino,  of  Sienna,  and  the  two  Sozzini. 

Several  other  prominent  Italians,  as  Aurelio  Saffi,  Luigi  Luzzati,  and 
Ruggero  Bonghi,  will  speak  at  the  conference  to  be  held  in  Italy  on  the 
birthday  of  Channing.     But,  while  welcoming  these  new  laborers  in  the 


THE    INFLUENCE    OF    CHANNING    IN    EUROPE.  529 

vineyard,  we  must  not  forget  those  older  Italian  expositors  of  Channing 
who  have  borne  the  heat  and  burden  of  the  day:  the  advocate  IMagnani, 
who  for  years  conducted  Unitarian  service  at  Pisa;  Professor  Filopanti, 
the  astronomer,  who  lectured  on  Channing's  idea  of  duty,  in  Bologna, 
Milan,  Rome,  and  Naples ;  and  Ferdinando  Bracciforti,  the  translator  of 
Channing,  who  has  also  for  years  past  conducted  a  Unitarian  church  in 
Florence,  and  another  in  Reggio. 

X.  Hungary. 

While  for  about  three  hundred  years  there  has  existed  in  Transylvania 
an  Episcopalian  Unitarian  Church,  the  work  of  Channing  was  first  com- 
municated to  the  brethren  there  by  Alexander  Farkas,  a  Unitarian  from 
Klausenburg,  who  visited  Massachusetts  in  1831,  and  afterwards  pub- 
lished an  account  of  his  American  travels.  In  1848,  the  young  Transyl- 
vanian  professor,  Joseph  Jakab,  brother  of  the  learned  biographer  of 
Francis  Davidis,  took  home  with  him,  on  his  return  from  Manchester 
New  College,  the  works  of  Channing,  intending  to  circulate  them  in 
Hungary,  but  was  prevented  by  the  war  and  his  early  death.  In  1852, 
Sydow's  German  translation  was  introduced  among  the  Transylvanian 
Saxons;  and  in  1861  the  Jveresz/en^'  Afagve^z  {Christian  Seed-sower)  con- 
tained translations  from  Channing's  works ;  while  the  professors  of  the 
college,  aided  by  money  from  Boston,  have  now  translated  the  complete 
work  into  Magyar,  and  circulated  them  among  Catholics,  Calvinists, 
Lutherans,  and  Greeks.  Professor  Moritz  Ballagi,  the  liberal  Calvinist, 
and  Peter  Hatala,  formerly  Professor  of  Theology  in  the  Roman  Catho- 
lic Seminary  of  Budapest,  now  an  eloquent  advocate  of  Unitarianism, 
have  both  acknowledged  their  deep  obligation  to  the  works  of  Channing, 
which  are  read  by  men  of  all  churches  in  Hungary.  It  will  interest  you 
to  know  that  young  Count  Gerando,  grandson  of  Channing's  correspond- 
ent of  1832,  has  in  1875  publicly  notified  his  conversion  from  the  con- 
ventional Cathohcism  of  his  family  and  his  entry  into  the  Unitarian 
Church  of  Hungary. 

XI.  Scandinavia. 

In  Sweden  there  is  published  a  Unitarian  religious  paper  called  San- 
ningsokaren  (the  Truth-seeker),  which  has  a  circulation  of  about  two 
thousand  in  Sweden,  Norway,  Denmark,  Finland,  and  Iceland.  A  recent 
number,  mentioning  the  enterprise  of  Mr.  Spears,  says:  "Portions  of 
Channing's  works  have  been  translated  into  Icelandic  by  M.  Jochumson 
of  Reikiavik.     A  collection  of  Channing's  discourses  in  a  Swedish  vcr- 


530  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

ion  was  issued  as  early  as  1S40,  by  a  congenial  spirit,  Nils  Ignell."  I 
may  mention  that  one  of  our  English  Unitarian  ministers,  Rev.  Ephraim 
Turland  of  Ainsworth,  has  made  the  promotion  of  Channing's  influence 
in  Scandinavia  his  own  special  object,  and  I  have  asked  him  to  write 
you  direct. 

XII.  Switzerland. 

The  German  cantons  of  Switzerland  have  been  always  in  intimate  con- 
nection with  the  German  admirers  of  Channing.  Nippold,  whose  eulogy 
I  have  quoted,  and  Schmidt,  a  former  secretary  of  the  Protestanten- 
verein,  are  now  professors  of  theology  at  Swiss  universities.  The  French 
cantons  are  in  just  as  intimate  connection  with  the  liberal  Protestants 
of  Paris ;  and  Etienne  Chastel,  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History  at 
Geneva,  and  the  friend  of  John  James  Tayler,  is  among  Channing's  most 
ardent  admirers.  But  French  Switzerland  has  itself  produced  two  great 
Unitarians, —  Samuel  Vincent  and  Alexander  Vinet,  —  who  did  for 
French  theology  what  Channing  did  for  New  England.  Samuel  Vin- 
cent, after  studying  Kant,  Schleiermacher,  and  De  Wette,  put  Chris- 
tianity, like  Channing,  into  relation  with  the  facts  of  conscience  and  the 
wants  of  the  human  soul ;  while  Vinet,  making  Christ  the  centre  of  the 
gospel,  also  expresses  the  idea  of  the  New  England  saint  when  he  says, 
'  The  great  merit  of  the  Reformation  was  the  restoration  to  the  indi- 
vidual of  all  his  responsibility, —  to  remove  him  from  the  convenient  gov- 
ernment of  the  faith  of  authority,  and  to  impose  upon  him  the  most  severe 
of  laws,  that  of  liberty^'' 

XIII.  Holland. 

Holland,  like  Switzerland  and  America,  always  hospitable  to  those 
who  were  exiles  for  conscience'  sake,  has  never  been  wanting  in  the 
representatives  of  a  free  theology  since  Erasmus  John  published  his 
Antitheses  DoctrincB  Christi  et  Antichristi  de  uno  vero  Deo. 

Its  older  liberal  school  —  of  which  Van  der  Palm,  Heringa,  Muntighe, 
and  Clarisse  were  the  chiefs  —  arrived  at  the  same  results  as  Channing, 
and  by  the  same  methods,  while  Clarisse  resembled  him  as  a  man  and 
as  preacher. 

In  the  Walloon  Churches  of  Holland,  Coquerel,  Reville,  and  Maron- 
nier  have  made  Channing  known  ;  and  the  latter  has  translated  some  of 
his  writings  into  Dutch. 

In  a  work  published  in  London  by  Dr.  E.  J.  Diest  Lorgion,  a  member 
of  the  Groningen  School,  Channing  is  also  quoted  as  an  authority  in 
rclicrion. 


THE    INFLUENCE    OF    CHANNING    IN    EUROPE.  53 1 

The  foreign  missions  of  the  Dutch  Missionary  Societies  are  more 
wisely  conducted  than  any  others  known  to  me. 

XIV.  Russia. 

Of  the  Baltic  provinces  of  Russia,  I  have  already  spoken  in  connection 
with  Germany;  of  Finland,  in  connection  with  Scandinavia. 

Though  I  have  heard  that  some  of  Channing's  works  have  been  trans- 
lated into  Russian,  I  have  no  evidence  of  the  fact.  So  far  as  the  Catho- 
lics of  Russian  Poland  are  concerned,  their  great  sympathy  with  France 
leads  me  to  believe  that  Rend  Lavollde's  book  on  Channing  would  find 
ready  acceptance  among  them,  while  I  can  form  no  opinion  as  to  the 
people  who  are  under  the  tyranny  of  the  Russo-Greek  priesthood. 

XV.  Spain  and  Portugal  and  their  Colonies. 

Here  I  have  not  discovered  any  traces  of  Channing's  influence,  and  in 
regard  to  them  I  would  refer  to  what  I  have  already  said  about  LavoUde's 
book. 

XVI.  Greece,  Turkey,  Syria,  Egypt. 

In  these  countries,  the  American  missions  might  be  used  as  a  means 
of  propagandism.  And  I  think  it  especially  desirable  that  a  selection 
from  Channing  should  be  translated  into  the  language  of  the  Koran. 

XVII.  In  Conclusion. 

I  have  tried  in  the  foregoing  report  to  confine  myself  as  much  as  pos- 
sible to  the  published  evidence  of  other  men,  carefully  keeping  my  own 
subjective  convictions  in  the  background. 

I  cannot,  however,  conclude  without  expressing  my  own  conviction 
that  we  have  in  the  works  of  Channing  an  aid  to  missionary  effort, 
in  the  circulation  of  which  all  schools  of  Unitarians  can  unite,  and 
which  is  likely  to  be  welcomed  by  people  of  every  church  and  country. 
Let  us,  however,  in  using  it,  carefully  examine  all  that  has  been  written 
about  Channing  in  every  country  in  which  his  books  have  been  read, 
and,  as  far  as  possible,  adapt  our  selections  from  Channing  to  the  neces- 
sities of  time  and  place. 

You  in  Brooklyn  arc  at  the  gate  of  America,  and  have  tlie  best  oppor- 
tunity of  influencing  those  who  come  from  the  Old  World  as  immigrants, 
and  who  come  to  the  Old  World  as  visitors.  And  I  would  earnestly 
suggest  to  you  the  propriety  of  having  selections  from  Channing  in  the 


53-  CHANNING    CENTENARY. 

chief  European  languages,  or  the  best  essays  on  Channing  existing  in 
these  languages, —  as  Sbarbaro's  in  Italian,  Sydow's  or  Manchot's  in 
German,  Lavollde's  in  French, —  distributed,  at  the  lowest  possible  price, 
wherever  they  can  do  any  good. 

Yours  very  cordially, 

John  Fretwell. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 

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